When general introductions had followed, the Count Itokai smiled, with a flash of white and strong teeth.

"We have come to present a certain matter to you—but we find you entertaining guests—so the business can wait."

The courtesy of manner and the precision of inflection had the perfection of Japanese officialdom, but McCalloway's response succeeded in blending with an equal politeness a note of unmistakable aloofness.

"As you wish, gentlemen, though there is no matter concerning myself which might not be discussed in the presence of these friends."

"Assuredly!" This time it was Oku who spoke. "It is unfortunate that we are not at liberty to be more outspoken. The matter is one of certain ... information ... which we hope you can give us ... and which is official: not personal with ourselves."

Masters made the move. "I'll pop out and see that your horses are stabled. Gentlemen—" he turned to the others—"it's a fine frosty night ... shall we finish our cigars in the open air?"

With deprecating apology the two newcomers watched them go, and when the place had been vacated save for the three, McCalloway turned and bowed his guests to chairs before the hearth.

It had been a strange picture before. It was stranger now, augmented by these two squat figures with dark faces, high cheek bones, and wiry black hair: Japanese diplomats sitting before a Cumberland mountain hearth-stone.

"Excellency," began the Count Oku promptly, "I am authorized by my government to proffer you a commission upon the staff of the army of Nippon."

McCalloway's eyes narrowed. He had not seated himself but had preferred to remain non-committally standing, and now his figure stiffened and his lips set themselves.

"Count," he said almost curtly, "before we talk at all, you must be candid with me. If I choose to live in solitude, any intrusion upon that privacy should be with my consent. May I inquire how the name of Victor McCalloway has chanced to become known and of interest to the Government of Japan?"

The diplomatic agent bowed.

"The question is in point, Excellency. Unhappily I am unable to answer it. What is known to my government I cannot say. I can only relate what has been delegated to me."

"I take it you can, at least, do that."

"We have been told that a gentleman who for reasons of his own prefers to use the name of Victor McCalloway, had formerly a title more widely known."

This time McCalloway's voice was sharply edged.

"However that may be, I have now only one name, Victor McCalloway."

"That we entirely understand. Some few years back my government, in an effort to encourage Europeanizing the Chinese army, attempted to enlist your honourable services. Is that not true?"

McCalloway nodded but, as he did so, anger blazed hotly in his eyes.

"To know more about a gentleman, in private life, than he cares to state, constitutes a grave discourtesy, sirs. Whatever activities my soldiering has included, I have never been a mercenary. I have fought only under my own flag and my sword is not for hire!"

The Orientals rose and again they bowed, but this time the voice of the Count Oku dropped away its soft sheath of diplomatic suavity and, though it remained low of pitch, it carried now a ring of purpose and positiveness.

"The officer who fights for a cause is not a soldier of fortune, Excellency. The flag of the Rising Sun has a cause."

"Japan is at peace with the world. Military service can be for a cause only when it is active."

"Yes, Japan is at peace with the world—now!" The voice came sharply, almost sibilantly, with the aspirates of the race. "I am authorized to state to you that service with our high command will none the less be active—and before many months have passed. I am further authorized to state to you that the foe will be a traditional enemy of Great Britain: that our interests will run parallel with those of the British Empire—If you take service under the Sun flag, Excellency, it will be against foes of the Cross of St. George."

The two Japanese stood very erect, their beady eyes keenly agleam. Slowly, and subconsciously, Victor McCalloway too drew his shoulders back, as though he were reviewing a division. He was hearing the Russo-Japanese War forecast weeks before it burst like shrapnel on an astonished world.

"Gentlemen," he said gravely, "you must grant me leisure for thought. This is a most serious matter."

A half hour later, with cigars glowing, the guests from Japan and the guests from Louisville sat about the hearth, but on none of the faces was there any trace of the unusual or of a knowledge of great secrets.

In all truth, Mahomet had come to the mountain.

Boone had not long returned from his Christmas vacation. So when he came into his dormitory room from his classes one afternoon and found his patron awaiting him there with a grave face, he was somewhat mystified, until with a soldier's precision McCalloway came to his point.

"My boy," he said, "I have come here to have a very serious talk with you."

Boone's face, which had flushed into pleasurable surprise at the sight of his visitor, fell at the gravity of the voice. He guessed at once that this was the preface to such an announcement as he always dreaded in secret, and his own words came heavily.

"I reckon you mean—that you aim to—go away."

"I aim to talk to you about going away."

Boone rallied his sinking spirits as he announced with a creditable counterfeit of cheerfulness, "All right, sir; I'm listening."

For a while the older man talked on. He was sitting in the plain room of the dormitory—and his gaze was fixed off across the snow-patched grounds, and the scattered buildings of the university.

He did not often look at the boy, who had grown into his heart so deeply that the idea of a parting carried a barb for both. He thought that Boone could discuss this matter with greater ease if the eyes of another did not lay upon him the necessity of maintaining a stoical self-repression.

McCalloway for the first time traced out in full detail the plan that he had conceived for Boone: the fantastic dream of his pilgrimage in one generation along the transitional road his youthful nation had travelled since its birth. As he listened, the young man's eyes kindled with imagination and gratitude difficult to express. He had been, he thought, ambitious to a fault, but for him his preceptor had been far more ambitious. The horizons of his aspiration widened under such confidence, but he could only say brokenly, "You're setting me a mighty big task, sir. If I can do any part of it, I'll owe it all to you."

"We aren't here to compliment each other, my boy," replied McCalloway bluntly. "But if I've made a mistake in my judgment, I am not yet prepared to admit it. You owe me nothing. I was alone, without family, without ties. I was here with a broken life—and you gave me renewed interest. But that couldn't have gone on, I think, if you hadn't been in the main what I thought you—if you hadn't had in you the makings of a man and a gentleman."

He broke off and cleared his throat loudly.

Boone, too, found the moment a trying one, and he thrust his hands deep in his trousers pockets and said nothing. The uprights that supported his life's structure seemed, just then, withdrawn without warning.

"You know, when I was offered service in China, I declined—and you know why," McCalloway reminded him. "I should do the same thing today, except that now I think you can stand on your own legs. I take it you no longer need me in the same sense that you did then—and the call that comes to me is not an unworthy one."

"I reckon, sir—it's military?"

"It's at least advisory, in the military sense. My boy, it pains me not to be able to take you into my full confidence—but I can't. I can't even tell you where I am going."

"You—" the question hung a moment on the next words—"you aim to come back—sometime?"

"God granting me a safe conclusion, I shall come back ... and the thought of you will be with me in my absence ... the confidence in you ... the hope for you."

There was again a long silence, then McCalloway said:

"I came here to discuss it with you. I have declined to give a positive answer until we could do that."

Boone wheeled, and his head came up. He felt suddenly promoted to the responsible status of a counsellor. There was now no tremor in his voice, except the thrill of his young and straightforward courage.

"You say it's not unworthy work, sir. There can't be any question. You've got to go. If you hesitated, I'd know full well I was spoiling your life."

Later, side by side, they tramped the muddy turnpikes between the rich acres of farms where thoroughbreds were foaled and trained.

"I have talked with Colonel Wallifarro," announced the soldier at length. "Next fall he wants you to come to Louisville and finish reading law in his office."

But the boy shook his head. Here, confronting a great loneliness, he was feeling the contrast between the land, whose children called it God's country, and his own meagre hills, where the creeks bore such names as Pestilence and Hell-fer-sartain.

"I couldn't go to Louisville, sir. I couldn't pay my board or buy decent clothes there. I've got that little patch of ground up there and the cabin on it, though. I'd aimed to go back there—I'll soon be of age, now—and seek to get elected clerk of the court."

"Why clerk of the court? Why not the legislature?"

The boy grinned.

"The legislature was what I aimed at—until I read the constitution. About the only job I'm not too young for is the clerkship."

McCalloway nodded.

"I see no reason why you shouldn't make that race, but you'll be a fitter servant of your people for knowing a bit more of the world. As to the money, I've arranged that—though you'll have to live frugally. There will be to your credit, in bank, enough to keep you for a year or two—and if I shouldn't get back—Colonel Wallifarro has my will. I want you to live at my house when you're in the mountains—and look after things—my small personal effects."

But for that plan of financing his future, Boone had a stout refusal, until the soldier stopped in the road and laid a hand on his shoulder. "I have never had a son," he said simply. "I have always wanted one. Will you refuse me?"

It was a very painful day for both of them, but when at last Boone stood under the railroad shed and saw the man who was his idol wave his hat from the rear platform, he waved his own in return, and smiled the twisted smile of stiff lips.

On the ninth of February, as the boy glanced at the morning paper before he started for his first class, he saw headlines that brought a creep to his scalp, and the hand that held the paper trembled.

Admiral Togo's fleet was steaming, with decks cleared for action, off Port Arthur—already a Japanese torpedo-boat flotilla had attacked and battered the Russian cruisers that crouched like grim watchdogs at the harbour's entrance—already the gray sea-monsters flying the sun-flag had ripped out their cannonading challenge to the guns of the coast batteries!

There had yet been no declaration of war—and the world, which had wearied of the old story of unsuccessful treaty negotiations, rubbed astonished eyes to learn that overnight a volcano of war had burst into eruption—that lava-spilling for which the Empire of Nippon had been building for a silent but determined decade.

Boone was late for his classes that day—and so distrait and inattentive that his instructors thought he must be ill. To himself he was saying, with that ardour that martial tidings bring to young pulses, "Why couldn't he have taken me along with him?"