She looked up with shining eyes, and Thaine took both of her hands in his, saying:
“I must tell you good-by now. Mother will know I am here and will be dragging the lake for me. This isn’t like other good-bys. Of course, I may come back a Brigadier General and make you very proud of me, or I might not come at all, but I won’t say that. Oh, Leigh, Leigh, may I tell you once more how dear you are to me? Will you promise again to send me the same message you sent to Prince Quippi when you want me to come back?”
“I will,” Leigh replied in a low voice, and for that moment the grove became for them a holy sanctuary, wherein their words were sacred vows.
When Thaine reached home again, Dr. Carey was just leaving, and the way was prepared for the purpose of his own coming, as he had hoped it would be.
“I’ve a call to make across the river. I’ll be back in time to take you up to catch the train. There’s a feast of a breakfast waiting in there for you. I know, for I had my share of it. Good-by for an hour or two.”
The doctor waved his hand to Thaine and drove away.
“So the wanderlust and spirit of adventure in the Aydelot blood got you after all,” Asher Aydelot said as he looked across the breakfast table at his son. “It seems such a little while ago that I was a boy in Ohio, a foolish fifteen-year-old, crazy to see and be into what I’ve wished so often since that I could forget.”
“But you don’t object, Father?” Thaine asked eagerly.
Asher did not reply at once. A rush of boyhood memories flooded his mind, and as he looked at Virginia he recalled how his mother had looked at him on the day he 297 left home to join the Third Ohio regiment nearly forty years ago. And then he remembered the moonlit night and his mother’s blessing when he told of his longing for the open West, where opportunity hunts the man.
“No, Thaine,” he answered gently at last. “All I ask is that you try to foresee what is coming in hardship and responsibility. Young men go to war for adventure mostly. The army life may make a hero of you, not by brevet nor always by official record, but a hero nevertheless in bravery where courage is needed, and in a sense of duty done. Or it can make a low-grade scoundrel of you almost before you know it, if you do not put yourself on guard duty over yourself twenty-four hours out of every twenty-four. War means real hardship. It is in everything the opposite of peace. And this war foreshadows big events. It may lead you to Cuba or to the Orient. Our Asiatic squadron is ordered from Hong Kong. Dr. Carey tells me it is going to meet the Spanish navy in the Philippines. I thought I fixed the West when I came here as a scout and later a settler, and drove the frontier back with my rifle and my hoe. Is it possible your frontier is further westward still? Even across the Pacific Ocean, where another kind of wilderness lies?”