want to help. I'm going to help. But I'm
not going into it with any illusions about military bands and pretty
uniforms and grand-stand plays. It's the biggest job in the world
to-day, and it's got to be done. But what I see in it in the meantime
are blood and filth and stench and suffering and horror and a limitless,
stoical endurance. And--well, I know I'm going. But I can't quite see
myself coming home."

Save for his revelation on the morning they met, this was the longest
personal confidence Laurence Devon had ever made to another human being
except his sister Barbara. At its end, as she could not speak, he
watched her for a moment in silence, already half regretting what he had
said. Then she rose with a fiercely abrupt movement, and going to the
window stood looking at the storm. He followed her and stood beside her.

"Laurie," she said suddenly.

"Yes?"

"I can't stand it."

"Can't stand it?"

He repeated her words almost absently. His eyes were on a stocky figure
moving among the trees below. It kept in constant motion and, he
observed with pleasure, it occasionally stamped its feet and swung its
arms as if suffering from the cold.

"I can't stand this situation."

"Then we must clear it up for you." He spoke reassuringly, his eyes
still on the active figure. "Is that one of our keepers, down there?"

She nodded.

"He has instructions to watch the front entrance and windows. There's
another man watching the rear."

"He didn't watch very closely," he reminded her. "See how easily I got
in." He studied the moving figure. "Doris," he said slowly, "I'd bet a
thousand dollars against one doughnut that if I walked out of the house
and up to that fellow, he'd run like a rabbit. I don't know why I think
so, but I do."

She shook her head.

"Oh, no, he wouldn't!"

"What makes you think he wouldn't?"

"Because I heard Shaw give him his orders for just that contingency."

Her companion took this in silence.

"May I ask what they were?" he said at last.

"No, I can't tell you."

"I hope he hasn't a nice little bottle of chloroform in his overcoat
pocket, or vitriol," murmured Laurie, reflectively. "By the way," he
turned to her with quickened interest, "something tells me it's long
after lunch-time. Is there any reason why we shouldn't eat?"

She smiled.

"None whatever. The ice-box contains all the things a well regulated
ice-box is supposed to hold. I overheard Shaw and his secretary
discuss