became to him an
intolerable obligation.

Standing there by the door, the man's face darkened, until for the
moment it wore again the sombre and sullen hate that had marred its
boyhood. The hands at his side closed into fists, and looking off across
the hills, he said aloud:

"It was a dream that well-nigh wrecked me. I never want to see her or
hear of her again!"

But after a moment the bitterness turned to longing, and with an
indignant voice, as though denouncing an enemy who stood before him, he
broke out tempestuously: "That's a lie! You love her.... You always
will!"

Then around the abrupt turn of the road came a horseman, and Boone
recognized him, with astonishment, as Morgan Wallifarro, dust-covered
and mounted on a livery beast.

But the Morgan who dismounted by the rail fence wore a face aged in a
fashion that startled Boone. He was not the kidney that burns out in a
few years of strenuosity, but a man with a mind of steel and a body of
whipcord, and now his eyes were lined and ringed as they should not have
been until his hair had turned white.

Boone supposed that some matter of party consultation had brought his
unannounced guest, since they were both now men of leadership, so he
inquired, after they had shaken hands:

"Is it politics, Morgan?"

Wallifarro nodded.

"In part that," he answered slowly, "but it's hard to pin one's mind
down to party details today, Boone. It's like whistling a petty tune
into the teeth of a hurricane."

"Hurricane?" Boone repeated the final word in a puzzled tone. "I don't
follow you."

"My God, man," exclaimed the other, in sheer and undisguised amazement,
"don't you know?"

"Know what? Remember that I've been in the backwoods for three weeks,"
smiled the hillsman, "and I haven't seen a paper for ten days."

Again for a moment the Louisville lawyer stood incredulously silent;
then he said sharply:

"The war.... It's four days old and more.... Austria, Servia, Germany,
Russia, France! They are all in it--and yesterday England came in."

The face of the member of the Foreign Affairs Committee wore a stunned
blankness, and the blood went out of it. From the tree across the road
the woodpecker began once more his hammering, and about the hoofs of the
hitched horse drifted a cloud of pale-yellow butterflies.

Finally Boone asked in a husky voice: "What of us?"

Morgan shook his head. "Two weeks ago," he said, "the whole thing was a
sheer impossibility.... N