concealed. Becky was apt to talk of things
that interested her. And there had been no doubt of her interest in
Dalton before her aunt had gone away.

Randy, coming often now to Huntersfield, had his heart torn for his
beloved. No one except himself knew what had happened, and the knowledge
stirred him profoundly. He held that burning torches and a stake were
none too good for Dalton. He sighed for the old days in Virginia when
gentlemen settled such matters in the woods at dawn, with pistols,
seconds, a shot or two. Farther back it would have been an affair of
knives and tomahawks--Indian chiefs in a death struggle.

But neither duels nor death struggles were in the modern mode, nor would
any punishment which he might inflict on Dalton help Becky in this
moment of deep humiliation. He knew her pride and the hurt that had come
to her, he knew her love, and the deadly inertia which had followed the
loss of illusion.

Randy's love was not a selfish love. In that tense moment of Becky's
confession on the day of the barbecue, his own hopes had died. The boy
in him had died, too, and he had reached the full stature of a man. He
wanted to protect and shield--he was all tenderness. He felt that he
would dare anything, do anything, if he could bring back to Becky the
dreams of which Dalton robbed her.

Night after night he sat in his room up-stairs in the old Schoolhouse,
and wrote on "The Trumpeter Swan." It was an outlet for his pent-up
emotions, and something of the romance which was denied him, something
of the indignation which stirred him, something of the passions of love
and revenge which fought within him, drove his pen onward, so that his
little tale took on color and life. Crude, perhaps, in form, it was yet
a song of youth and patriotism. It was Randy's call to his comrades.
There was to be no compromise. They must make men look up and listen--to
catch the sound of their clear note. The ideals which had made them
fight brutality and greed were living ideals. They were not to be doffed
with their khaki and overseas caps. Their country called, the whole
world called, for men with faith and courage. There was no place for
pessimism, no place for materialism, no place for sordidness.

His hero was, specifically, a man who had come back from the fighting,
flaming with the thought of his high future. He had found the world
smiling and unconcerned. It was this world which needed to listen to the
call of trumpets--high