er's reading chair and stood
listening at the window. It seemed to him that some one had called his
name. But the only sounds that broke the exquisite quietude of the
night were the distant barking of a dog, the whirl of an automobile on
the road or the pompous crowing of a master of a barnyard, taken up and
answered by others near and far.

Each time the boy had stood at the open window and peered out eagerly
and wistfully, but nothing had moved across the moon-bathed lawn or
disturbed the sleeping flowers. Under the cold light of the stars the
earth appeared to be more than usually peaceful and drowsy. All was
well.

But the boy's blood tingled, and he was filled with an unexplainable
sense of excitement. Some one needed him, and he wanted urgently to be
needed. He turned from the window and ran his eyes over the long, wide,
low-ceilinged masculine room, every single thing in which spelled
Father to him; then he went back to the chair the right to sit in which
had been given to him by death, persuaded that over the unseen wires
that stretch from heart to heart a signal had been sent, certain that
he was to hold himself in readiness to do something for Joan.

He had written out the words, "We count it death to falter, not to die"
on a long strip of card in big bold letters. They faced him as he sat
and read over and over again what he regarded as his father's message.
It was a call to service, an inspiration to activity, and it had
already filled him with the determination to fall into step with the
movement of the world, to put the money of which he was now the most
reluctant owner to some use as soon as the necessary legal steps of
proving his father's Will had been taken. He had made up his mind to
leave the countryside at the end of the week and meet his father's
lawyers and take advice as to how he could hitch himself to some
vigorous and operative pursuit. He was going, please God, to build up a
workmanlike monument to the memory of his father.

Ten o'clock struck, and uninterested in his book, he would have gone to
bed but for the growing feeling that he was not his own master, that he
might be required at any moment. The feeling became so strong that
finally he got up and went into the hall. He couldn't wait any longer.
He must go out, slip into the garden of the Ludlow house and search the
windows for a sight of Joan.

He unbolted the front door, gave a little gasp and found himself face
to face with the