didn't. I think it's got to be done, now. And the question is,
Ailsa, whose going to do it?"

But she was fiercely absorbed again in the news, leaning close over
the paper, tumbled dull-gold hair falling around her bare
shoulders, breath coming faster and more irregularly as she read
the incredible story and strove to comprehend its cataclysmic
significance.

"If others are going, I am," repeated her cousin sullenly.

"Going where, Steve?--Oh------"

She dropped the paper and looked up, startled; and he looked back
at her, defiant, without a flicker in those characteristic family
eyes of his, clear as azure, steady to punishment given or
taken--good eyes for a boy to inherit. And he inherited them from
his rebel mother.

"Father can't keep me home if other people go," he said.

"Wait until other people go." She reached out and laid a hand on
his arm.

"Things are happening too fast, Steve, too fast for everybody to
quite understand just yet. Everybody will do what is the thing to
do; the family will do what it ought to. . . . Has your mother
seen this?"

"Yes. Neither she nor father have dared speak about it before