"Within four days."

"Four days! And you can talk as you do, when you are going to war to
live the life of a common soldier--to die of fever, to be killed,
maybe," her lip shook and she stopped, but she went on thickly, "and be
thrown into an unknown grave or lie unburied in a jungle." She spoke
with such sudden passion that Crittenden was startled.

"Listen!"

Judge Page appeared in the doorway, welcoming Crittenden with old-time
grace and courtesy. Through supper, Judith was silent and thoughtful
and, when she did talk, it was with a perceptible effort. There was a
light in her eyes that he would have understood once--that would have
put his heart on fire. And once he met a look that he was wholly at loss
to understand. After supper, she disappeared while the two men smoked on
the porch. The moon was rising when she came out again. The breath of
honeysuckles was heavy on the air, and from garden and fields floated
innumerable odours of flower and clover blossom and moist grasses.
Crittenden lived often through that scene afterward--Judith on the
highest step of the porch, the light from the hallway on her dress and
her tightly folded hands; her face back in shadow, from which her eyes
glowed with a fire in them that he had never seen before.

Judge Page rose soon to go indoors. He did not believe there was going
to be much of a war, and his manner was almost cheery when he bade the
young man good-by.

"Good luck to you," he said. "If the chance comes, you will give a good