import? And yet at
Dresden he had been warned by another waiter, and warned truly.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, they're all going into it. Europe will be covered with
armies!"

"When?"

"In a few hours! Now, sir! Oh, I can't say any more!"

He hurried away, leaving John convinced that he told the truth. It was
stunning, appalling, unbelievable, impossible, but he believed it
nevertheless. There were underground channels of communication and true
news might come by the way of the kitchen as well as the palace. He was
absolutely convinced that he had heard a fact. Now he knew the cause of
that heaviness and depression in the atmosphere. Well the clouds might
gather, when such a thunderbolt as a general war was going to fall!

He immediately hunted up his uncle and Mr. Anson who had not yet left
the hotel, and told them what he had heard. Conviction seized them also.

"It's come at last, this European war! after a thousand false alarms,
it's come!" said the Senator, "and my boy, Vienna is no place for three
honest Americans who do not work in the dark. I say it, and I say it
without fear of contradiction, that it behooves us to flee westward with
all the speed we can."

"You won't hear any contradiction from me," said Mr. Anson. "Vienna is a
fine city, but nothing becomes it more than our leaving it. Which way do
we go?"

"There's a train in two hours for Salzburg and Munich," suggested John.

"Hurried packing," said the Senator, "but we can do it. Get ready the
baggage you two and I'll pay the bills. We'll go to Salzburg and sleep
there tonight, and tomorrow we'll reach Munich. The more I think about
this the less I like it. Why didn't we read all those signs earlier! I
suppose it's because we'd heard the false cry of wolf so many dozens of
times."

John and Mr. Anson made all speed with the baggage while the Senator
paid the bills, and, as they drove in their cab to the station, the
three felt more than ever the need of haste. The clouds seemed to be
shutting down completely on Vienna. John felt that it was hard to
breathe, but he knew it was the effect of the imagination. He was
oppressed by a sense of an impending and appalling catastrophe,
something more tremendous than anything that the world had yet
experienced. He had an impression that he had come to the end of an era,
and the impression was all the more powerful because it had been made so
suddenly.

They passed through an excited stati