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“Hello! Yes, this is Ras, speakin’. Who’s that? Hello, Frank, why ain’t you up to the dance? What?”

Turning about, Livermore waved to the guests. “Be quiet jest a minute. It’s kind o’ hard to hear him.”

For a moment he listened, while the changing expression on his face provoked greater curiosity and greater quietness.

“Ain’t that a caution?” he exclaimed, hanging up the receiver. “If England hain’t gone and declared war on Germany.”

“What’s that?” asked a voice on the verandah.

“War—the British is gone to war,” Livermore answered. “Frank Davidson just got back from Lockwood, an’ says the news just reached Lockwood afore he left.”

“War, eh?”

“Yep! So Frank says. Maybe it’s just talk.”

“Well, I guess it ain’t goin’ to do us no harm, Ras, anyhow,” said Alec Dent, waving with his fiddle-stick. “Get off the floor an’ give ’em a chance, Ras.”

Again the slow, measured music of the waltz floated out on the night air, and Mauney watched the lovers continue in their embrace.

His heart pounded with excitement. Vague sympathies, eager yearnings, and impatient impulses moved by turns in his breast. That which the newspapers had suspected had become fact. How could these people continue to dance in the face of such catastrophic news? He could not dance. He could only think and think, and wonder why, in the unexplorable depths of his heart, he was glad that war was come.