“And will bring it to the Hill to show off,” added Ralph. “Well it will be better and less dangerous than those abominable rockets.”
“I thought rockets were not very dangerous, Ralph.”
“There are rockets and rockets, sky rockets and war rockets and the Satanic inventors are getting up new and worse ones every year. No knowing what kind they have on the Hill. I have known of their having one at least that travelled a much longer distance than from here to the Hill and then went swooping down to the earth like a thunder bolt from the sky; but how stupid of me to tell you so, dear. Forgive me if I have made you afraid.”
“Not a bit, Ralph! I am never going to be afraid any more—that is, if you will tell me all about those fiendish inventions, so I can keep out of their way and help keep others out also. O how dreadful though to think that such horrible things are made! Surely they never ought to be. They are made to kill. They are a menace to human life on a prodigious scale and the men who invent them are no better than would-be murderers and should be arrested and treated as such.”
“That’s true, Ruth, and yet the governments of the world approve and hasten to buy the murderous inventions. There’s an inventor in this state who has made a gun for this government that will throw a shell thirty miles and crash a boat into kindling wood and kill every soul on board. And now he is trying to invent one that will throw a shell one hundred miles—one that can reach from the coast of France across the English channel and rip out the heart of London!”
“O how hideous!” exclaimed Ruth. “He must be a fiend incarnate; but what about the Schwarmer rocket?”
“Here it goes,” said Ralph.
“Mamma came within an inch of having her arm gored by one of the rockets sent down from the Hill only last year. She cautioned me not to write to you about it. I thought it foolish not to; but perhaps it was right not to tell you then. Now it is different. You have grown so brave—so suddenly brave. It seems to me you are growing braver and braver every hour. It’s like a miracle! Explain.”
Ruth’s explanation set Ralph into raptures. Presently, however, she called for an explanation in turn.
“There isn’t much more to explain,” said Ralph. “We all sat on the piazza watching the sky-rockets that were being sent up from the hill, at least the rest were. If I remember rightly I wasn’t paying much attention to them. My imagination had ‘crossed over’—you understand gone over the border—across the river—you see?”