"Is it politics, Morgan?"
Wallifarro nodded.
"In part that," he answered slowly, "but it's hard to pin one's mind down to party details today, Boone. It's like whistling a petty tune into the teeth of a hurricane."
"Hurricane?" Boone repeated the final word in a puzzled tone. "I don't follow you."
"My God, man," exclaimed the other, in sheer and undisguised amazement, "don't you know?"
"Know what? Remember that I've been in the backwoods for three weeks," smiled the hillsman, "and I haven't seen a paper for ten days."
Again for a moment the Louisville lawyer stood incredulously silent; then he said sharply:
"The war.... It's four days old and more.... Austria, Servia, Germany, Russia, France! They are all in it—and yesterday England came in."
The face of the member of the Foreign Affairs Committee wore a stunned blankness, and the blood went out of it. From the tree across the road the woodpecker began once more his hammering, and about the hoofs of the hitched horse drifted a cloud of pale-yellow butterflies.
Finally Boone asked in a husky voice: "What of us?"