"I don't know," she said. "Of course he didn't tell us the name of his
other son, but it might easily be James. Oh, I hope it isn't so!" she
added, her heart aching for the lonely old man whose one big interest in
life was his boys. "I do hope there has been some mistake."

"I guess we all do," said Amy gently, adding with a sigh: "But I'm afraid
there isn't very much hope of it. The Government is usually right when it
comes to things like that."

"Not always," Mollie retorted quickly. "Look at the time they reported
that Alien was among the missing and he wasn't at all. That is the only
mistake we happen to know about, but I fancy there are plenty of others."

At mention of that dreadful time when she had read Alien's name in the
long list of the missing, Betty experienced again something of the emotion
she had felt at that time.

She saw again in imagination the dark room where she had gone to be by
herself, she heard the thunder of the surf on the rocks outside and the
rumble of the thunder overhead. She saw once more the vision of Alien as
she had seen it then. Allen stretched out cold and dead perhaps on some
shell-ridden battlefield or perhaps, more terrible still, a prisoner in
the hands of the Hun, suffering unspeakable torture--

"But this is not as bad as though the boys were missing," she said
suddenly, speaking her thought aloud. "At least the professor will know
that his sons are dead."

The girls started and looked at Betty queerly.