"You bet! There's dare-devil action for you! Fighting the sea wolves in their own element! Shouldn't wonder if those Brighton submarine boys blow up the Kiel Canal before they're through! Got brains, those fellows. Well, things are moving. As sure as shooting, we're going to make the world safe for democracy! I guess I'll have to get into the game myself. It isn't any fun sitting on the bleachers. I'm goin' to enlist."
"Why not wait till you're of age and then let 'em draft you?"
"Not for me, kid. I want to have my choice of the branch of service I join."
"You've made up your mind, then?"
"Yep. Me for the Engineers' Corps. Believe me, there's no more important branch of the army——"
The young men had started off and now their voices died away among the trees. Whitcomb suddenly sat up very straight, his hands on his knees, and gazed fixedly before him, seeing nothing, but in his mind's eye seeing much, for a thought, not altogether new, had come to him and he was beginning to bite down on it hard. The boy's clenched hand went up into the air and then smote the bench seat quite forcibly.
"Must've smashed that fly, or was it a knotty problem?" said a jovial voice, the branches of the spruces parting to let the speaker through; a red-headed, freckled, squint-eyed lad who was quite as homely as the one whom he addressed was good looking.
Whitcomb greeted the newcomer sadly. "Well, old man, this is my last day on earth. It was my hopes I was smashing."
Roy Flynn, classmate, loyal friend, all-round good fellow, with laughing Irish eyes, threw back his head, opened a mouth that might almost have made a barn door jealous and very unmistakably chuckled.