“He wouldn’t be drafted. He is not old enough. And even if they automatically draft the boys as they become of age, it would be months before they reached Tom, and the war will be over by that time. But here he is throwing himself away——”
“Oh, Helen! Not that!” cried Ruth. “Our soldiers will fight for us—for their country—for honor. And a man’s life lost in such a cause is not thrown away.”
“That’s the way I feel,” said Helen, more steadily. “Tom is my twin. You don’t know what it means to have a twin brother, Ruth Fielding.”
“That is true,” sighed Ruth. “But I can imagine how you feel, dear. If you have hopes of the war’s being over so quickly, then I should expect Tom back from training camp safe and sound, and with no chance of ever facing the enemy. Has he really gone?”
“Oh, yes,” Helen told her despondently. “And lots of the boys who used to go to school with Tom at Seven Oaks. You know, all those jolly fellows who were at Snow Camp with us, and at Lighthouse Point, and on Cliff Island, and out West on Silver Ranch—and—and everywhere. Just to think! We may never see them again.”
“Dear me, Helen,” Ruth urged, “don’t look upon the blackest side of the cloud. It’s a long time before they go over there.”
“We don’t know how soon they will be in the trenches,” said her friend hopelessly. “These boys going to war——”
“And I wish I was young enough to go with ’em!” ejaculated a harsh voice, as the door of the back kitchen opened and the speaker stamped into the room. “Got that box ready to nail up, Niece Ruth? Ben’s hitching up the mules, and I want to get to Cheslow before dark.”
“Oh! Almost ready, Uncle Jabez,” cried the girl of the Red Mill, as the gray old man approached.
He was lean and wiry and the dust of his mill seemed to have been so ground into his very skin that he was a regular “dusty miller.” His features were as harsh as his voice, and he was seldom as excited as he seemed to be now.