“I wonder where Patsy is to-day,” said Dick to himself. “I hope they turned back,” but he said nothing to Ralph of his disquiet. It took that young man forty-eight hours longer to realize that Patsy might be caught in some unpleasant trap. He called up Dick. “The papers say there’s a panic among our tourists, Dick. Do you suppose that hits Patsy? Don’t you think we better drive out and see if the old folks have heard from her?”
It was Sunday afternoon of August 2nd that they went out. Mr. and Mrs. McCullon were quite serene. “Here’s a letter from Patsy,” they said. “Last we’ve heard.” It was from Paris, the 20th, two days later than theirs, the night before they started. “She ought to be in Brussels to-day. They say they’re worried over there about getting home. I guess Patsy can take care of herself all right. Glad she’s with some real live American business men—these Laurences seem to have pretty big foreign interests. Patsy’s all right with them.”
“Of course she is,” agreed Ralph. “Besides, Belgium’s a good place to be now. Belgium has a treaty with all her neighbors to keep off her soil. France and Germany keep a strip specially for fighting purposes. Couldn’t be a better place for Patsy.” And Ralph quite honestly believed it.
But it was a different thing to Dick. He was oppressed, bewildered, alarmed. He couldn’t have told just what he feared. The world seemed suddenly black and all roads closed. But at least he would keep his depression to himself. He knew how entirely unreasonable it would seem to all Sabinsport.
It was the invasion of Belgium—the thing that could not be, the resistance of the Belgians, the attack upon Liége, the realization that the Germans intended to fight their way to Paris—that they must pass through Brussels where Patsy was supposed to be, that gave Sabinsport its first sense that the war might concern them. The anxiety of Farmer and Mrs. McCullon, which grew with the reading of the papers, stirred the town mightily. The poor old people, so confident at first, had become more and more disturbed as they failed by cablegram to get any news. They spent part of every day in town, going back at night, white with weariness and forebodings. The only thing that buoyed them up was the series of postals they received in these early August days. Patsy had been at Dijon and eaten of its wonderful pastry. She had been at Beaune and seen the fireplace big enough to roast an ox in—they were starting for a run through the fortified towns—Belfort, Verdun, Metz, Maubeuge—and then to Brussels via Dinant and Namur. Dreadful days of silence followed.
It was not until the 14th of August that Mr. McCullon received word that Patsy had arrived that day in Brussels, was well and was posting a letter. The next morning a wire from Washington said that the Embassy reported her in Brussels, and when the New York papers came late in the afternoon, there was her name in the State Department’s list of “Americans Found.”
It was wonderful how the news ran up and down the town. Willie Butler rushed into the house crying at the full of his lungs, “Miss Patsy’s found. Miss Patsy’s found.” Willie had been a year in the high school, and his admiration for his teacher, always considerable, had been heated white-hot by the excitement of her adventures. They talked about it in the barber shop and at the grocery and at the hardware store where Farmer McCullon traded and where he had been seen so often in the last terrible days, seeking from those whom long acquaintance had made familiar the support that familiarity and friendliness carry.
It was a topic for half the tea tables in Sabinsport that night, and many people whom Mr. and Mrs. McCullon scarcely knew called them up to tell them how glad they were Patsy was safe and sometimes to confide their dark suspicion that the reason there had been no news of her was that she was a prisoner of war!
In the long twelve days the McCullons and Sabinsport waited for Patsy’s letter, regular cablegrams notified them of her safety. Then the letter came. Simple as it was, it took on something of the character of a historical document in the town. It made the things they had read and shivered over every morning actual and in a vague way connected them with the events. There was no little pride, too, among Patsy’s friends in town that they should know an eye-witness of what they had begun to realize was the beginning of no ordinary war.
Patsy’s letter was headed