f the brasses continued and
the blue and white keys on the board sank and rose, although no finger
touched them.

Larmy squinted at the thing, and held his long, fuzzy, unshaven chin in
his hand. When the second line was cast the reporter broke the silence
with: "Well, I'll be damned!" And the Voice from David's mouth replied:
"Very likely." And the clicking of the brasses grew quicker.

Seven lines were cast and then the boy got up and went back to the couch
in the front room, where he yawned himself, apparently, through three
strata of consciousness, into his normal self. They took a proof of what
had been cast, but it was in Latin and they could not translate it.
David himself forgot about it the next day, but the reporter, being
impressed and curious, took the proof to the teacher of Latin at the
college, who translated it thus: "_He shall go away on a long journey
across the ocean, and he shall not return, yet the whole town shall see
him again and know him--and he shall bring back the song that is in his
heart, and you shall hear it._"

The next week the "Maine" was blown up, and in the excitement the
troubles of David were forgotten in the office. Moreover, as he had to
work overtime he put his soul deeper into the machine, and his nerves
took on something of the steel in which he lived. The Associated Press
report was long in those days, and the paper was filled with local news
of wars and rumours of wars, so that when the call for troops came in
the early spring, the town was eager for it, and David could not wait
for the local company to form, but went to Lawrence and enlisted with
the Twentieth Kansas. He was our first war-hero for thirty years, and
the town was proud of him. Most of the town knew why he went, and there
was reproach for the blonde in the Racket Store, who had told the girls
it would be in June and that they were going East for a wedding trip.

When David came back from Lawrence an enlisted man, with a week in which
to prepare for the fray, the Imperial Club gave him a farewell dance of
great pride, in that one end of Imperial Hall was decorated for the
occasion with all the Turkish rugs, and palms, and ferns, and
piano-lamps with red shades, and American flags draped from the electric
fixtures, and all the cut-glass and hand-painted punch-bowls that the
girls of the T. T. T. Club could beg or borrow; and red lemonade and
raspberry sherbet flowed like water. Whereat David Lewis was so pleas