is cousin had distinguished
himself by making no runs at all, but by missing two expensive catches
in the deep field. From there, after a slight inspection of a couple
of advertisement columns, he worked back to the middle leaf, where were
leaders and the news of nations and the movements of kings. All this
last week he had scanned such items with a growing sense of amusement
in the recollection of Hermann's disquiet over the Sarajevo murders,
and Aunt Barbara's more detailed and vivid prognostications of coming
danger, for nothing more had happened, and he supposed--vaguely only,
since the affair had begun to fade from his mind--that Austria had
made inquiries, and that since she was satisfied there was no public
pronouncement to be made.

The hot breeze from the window made the paper a little unmanageable for
a moment, but presently he got it satisfactorily folded, and a big black
headline met his eye. A half-column below it contained the demands which
Austria had made in the Note addressed to the Servian Government.
A glance was sufficient to show that they were framed in the most
truculent and threatening manner possible to imagine. They were not
the reasonable proposals that one State had a perfect right to make
of another on whose soil and with the connivance of whose subjects the
murders had been committed; they were a piece of arbitrary dictation, a
threat levelled against a dependent and an inferior.

Michael had read them through twice with a growing sense of uneasiness
at the thought of how Lady Barbara's first anticipations had been
fulfilled, when Hermann came in. He pointed to the paper Michael held.

"Ah, you have seen it," he said. "Perhaps you can guess what I wanted to
see you about."

"Connected with the Austrian Note?" asked Michael.

"Yes."

"I have not the vaguest idea."

Hermann sat down on the arm of his chair.

"Mike, I'm going back to Germany to-day," he said. "Now do you
understand? I'm German."

"You mean that Germany is at the back of this?"

"It is obvious, isn't it? Those demands couldn't have been made without
the consent of Austria's ally. And they won't be granted. Servia will
appeal to Russia. And . . . and then God knows what may happen. In the
event of that happening, I must be in my Fatherland ready to serve, if
necessary."

"You mean you think it possible you will go to war with Russia?" asked
Michael.

"Yes, I think it possible, and, if I am right, if there is that