On the ninth of February, as the boy glanced at the morning paper before he started for his first class, he saw headlines that brought a creep to his scalp, and the hand that held the paper trembled.
Admiral Togo's fleet was steaming, with decks cleared for action, off Port Arthur—already a Japanese torpedo-boat flotilla had attacked and battered the Russian cruisers that crouched like grim watchdogs at the harbour's entrance—already the gray sea-monsters flying the sun-flag had ripped out their cannonading challenge to the guns of the coast batteries!
There had yet been no declaration of war—and the world, which had wearied of the old story of unsuccessful treaty negotiations, rubbed astonished eyes to learn that overnight a volcano of war had burst into eruption—that lava-spilling for which the Empire of Nippon had been building for a silent but determined decade.
Boone was late for his classes that day—and so distrait and inattentive that his instructors thought he must be ill. To himself he was saying, with that ardour that martial tidings bring to young pulses, "Why couldn't he have taken me along with him?"
CHAPTER XXI
For Boone the approaching summer was no longer a period of zestful anticipation. During that whole term he had looked eagerly ahead to those coming months back in the hills, when with the guidance of his wise friend he should plunge into the wholesome excitement of canvassing his district.
Now McCalloway was gone. And just before commencement a letter from Anne brought news that made his heart sink.
"Father is going home to England for the summer," she said, "and that means that I won't get to the hills. I'm heartbroken over it, and it isn't just that 'I always miss the hills,' either. I do miss them. Every dogwood that I see blooming alone in somebody's front yard, every violet in the grass, makes me homesick for the places where beauty isn't only sampled but runs riot—but there's a more personal note than that."
"You must climb old Slag-face for me, Boone, and write me all about it. If a single tree has blown down, don't fail to tell me, dear."
There was also another thing which would cloud his return to Marlin County. He could, in decency, no longer defer a painful confession to Happy. So far, chance had fended it off, but now she was back from the settlement school for good, and he was through college. In justice to her further silence could not be maintained.