August came; September—the Hindenburg Line was broken. Each day the triumphant headlines in the papers were big and black and also, alas, the casualty lists on the inside pages long and longer. Then October. The armistice was signed. It was the end. The Allied world went wild, cheered, danced, celebrated. Then it sat back, thinking, thanking God, solemnly trying to realize that the killing days, the frightful days of waiting and awful anxiety, were over.
And early in November another telegram came to the office of Z. Snow and Co. This time it came, not from the War Department direct, but from the Boston headquarters of the American Red Cross.
And this time, just as on the day when the other fateful telegram came, Laban Keeler was the first of the office regulars to learn its contents. Ben Kelley himself brought this message, just as he had brought that telling of Albert Speranza's death. And the usually stolid Ben was greatly excited. He strode straight from the door to the bookkeeper's desk.
“Is the old man in, Labe?” he whispered, jerking his head toward the private office, the door of which happened to be shut.
Laban looked at him over his spectacles. “Cap'n Lote, you mean?” he asked. “Yes, he's in. But he don't want to be disturbed—no, no. Goin' to write a couple of important letters, he said. Important ones. . . . Um-hm. What is it, Ben? Anything I can do for you?”
Kelley did not answer that question. Instead he took a telegram from his pocket.
“Read it, Labe,” he whispered. “Read it. It's the darndest news—the—the darnedest good news ever you heard in your life. It don't seem as if it could he, but, by time, I guess 'tis. Anyhow, it's from the Red Cross folks and they'd ought to know.”
Laban stared at the telegram. It was not in the usual envelope; Kelley had been too anxious to bring it to its destination to bother with an envelope.
“Read it,” commanded the operator again. “See if you think Cap'n Lote ought to have it broke easy to him or—or what? Read it, I tell you. Lord sakes, it's no secret! I hollered it right out loud when it come in over the wire and the gang at the depot heard it. They know it and it'll be all over town in ten minutes. READ IT.”
Keeler read the telegram. His florid cheeks turned pale.