It had rained so hard for the past two days that no one had gone to the
village, which was nearly three miles from the farm. But when the storm was
over at last, George and Elizabeth tramped down and came back at dusk with
a bag full of mail. Their clothes were mud-bespattered and they hurried
upstairs to change before supper, while Roger settled back in his chair and
spread open his New York paper. It was July 30, 1914.

From a habit grown out of thirty odd years of business life, Roger read his
paper in a fashion of his own. By instinct his eye swept the page for news
dealing with individual men, for it was upon people's names in print that
he had made his living. And so when he looked at this strange front page it
gave him a swift twinge of alarm. For the news was not of men but of
nations. Austria was massing her troops along the Serbian frontier, and
Germany, Italy, Russia, France and even England, all were in a turmoil,
with panics in their capitals, money markets going wild.

Edith came down, in her neat black dress with its narrow white collar,
ready for supper. She glanced at her father.

"Why, what's the matter?"

"Look at this." And he tossed her a paper.

"Oh-h-h," she murmured softly. "Oh, how frightful that would be." And she
read on with lips compressed. But soon there came from a room upstairs the
sudden cry of one of her children, followed by a shrill wail of distress.
And dropping the paper, she hurried away.

Roger continued his reading.

Deborah came. She saw the paper Edith had dropped, picked it up and sat
down to read, and there were a few moments of absolute silence. Then Roger
heard a quivering breath, and glancing up he saw Deborah's eyes, intent and
startled, moving down the columns of print in a swift, uncomprehending way.

"Pretty serious business," he growled.

"It can't happen!" she exclaimed.

And they resumed their reading.

In the next three days, as they read the news, they felt war like a
whirlpool sucking in all their powers to think or feel, felt their own
small personal plans whirled about like leaves in a storm. And while their
minds--at first dazed and stunned by the thought of such appalling armies,
battles, death and desolation--slowly cleared and they strove to think, and
Roger thought of business shivered to atoms in every land, and Deborah
thought of schools by thousands all over Europe closing down, in cities and
in villages, in valleys and on mountain sides,