When Dr. Rich had broken his news to his wife, they both breathed easier. And Mrs. Rich could feel still more relief coming. She had said nothing about her occasional shortness of breath, but she looked forward eagerly to the pure cold air of the north. And now that the college year was over and the faculty scattered, there need be no sadness of a farewell dinner.

There were persons in the faculty who were conscious of nitrogen, but the Riches were not. They were literary and easily deceived. They took their nitrogen as it came, and really thought it was peas and beans and eggs. They never stopped to think that they were constantly inhaling and exhaling nitrogen without brushing a single electron off its surface.

Only Horatio was an exception. He knew the stuff. He was going to raise it as cow-peas and plow it under. He had no farm as yet, but a tenancy had been promised him on the Canadian side of the St. Mary’s, and when his folks were all packed up to leave Warrenville forever, he went ahead by train to open the cabin for them.

The rest of the family followed by steamer. The evening was pleasant as they watched the Chicago river widen before them into Lake Michigan. Their first objective was Mackinac island, famous long before the days of railroads, the point at which three great lakes meet. They lie like a clover leaf, and the cabin of Dr. Rich stood by the channel that connects the uppermost leaflet with the other two.

To change the figure to that which appears in a certain fountain, Lake Superior is a brimming shell from which a spillway leads the water down. The beauty spreads westward into Michigan, and eastward into Huron. Thence it narrows into Erie, drops with a roar and a rainbow into Ontario, and rushes to the sea. The Riches dwelt by the first spillway, which forms part of the boundary between the United States and Canada.

It is called the St. Mary’s river, and is perhaps the only waterway along which bear and moose peer from their covert at great steamers going by. No other stream carries so great a tonnage through so wild a country. Iron comes down, and coal goes up, and there are points where a lump of either can be tossed ashore as the great steam barge slips past.

From Mackinac they took a smaller steamer to Sault Sainte Marie, and then retraced their course till they reached a small pier known as Upper Encampment. Here they expected to see Horatio, but saw instead their old Scotch friend, George Gillies, keeper of the lights.

“Why,” said Mrs. Rich, “where’s Horatio?”

“He gied me the key, and said he was going across the river, hunting.”

“But Horatio never hunts out of season.”

“Well, now, he might be hunting a cow on his new farm, or he might be hunting berries for your supper.” So said George Gillies, but went away looking grave.

When they entered the log cabin, with its fire of silvery birch crackling cheerfully in the fireplace, Mrs. Rich found a note on the table:

Yes, Dearest,

The gray squirrel has gone a-hunting. He knows how you used to worry when he first carried a gun, but please remember that he never had an accident. He has gone with some of the Canadian boys to Camp Valcartier.

Couldn’t help it, mother, and couldn’t bear to say good-by. Father will understand. He himself went hunting.

Tell Jeanie I love her and love her star. Please God, we’ll unify it by the use of nitrogen, and please God, I’ll come back safe.

I hope you will find everything all right at the cabin. I’ve added some picric acid to the medicine closet in case of burns.

Mother dearest, I love you.

Mrs. Rich sat down on the old haircloth sofa and seemed a little faint. She was smiling bravely, but her lips were so blue that her husband brought her a glass of water with a little brandy in it.

Then she showed him the news.

“I was afraid of it,” he said. “I hoped we’d get here before it happened.”

Jean seized the note and read it. Then she laid it carefully on the table and knelt beside her mother.

Next morning Dr. Rich had a physician come down from Sault Sainte Marie to see his wife. After that he kept a tiny hypodermic syringe where he could lay a hand on it.

Twin-flowers were faintly blushing on Jean’s island, which was called the Duckling, but they faded before any news came from Horatio. Eglantine came and blushed more deeply, bringing his first letter. Horatio wrote of his preparations as if Germans were wild wolves.

Over behind the hill balsams were fragrant in the August sun, unaware that in South America there is another fragrant balsam, named tolu, whence toluene. Hewn out among the balsams lay Dr. Rich’s garden, on which he had labored for nearly half a century. In it were sweet peas of every hue, and green peas now ready to eat. The nodules on the roots had stored up nitrogen along with ravishing colors and delicious taste. But little the old soldier suspected that the grandsons of his comrades were taking toluene out of tar, to mix with nitrogen and pack into shrapnel. Nor, when he lovingly surveyed the yellow crystals that his son had left him to soothe the pain of burns, did he suspect that Americans were filling bombs with that stuff and shipping them to France for the ammunition dumps of the Canadian army.

September, and rock-rose shone with goldenrod like ore among the quartz. Then came a letter from France. Horatio had ceased to hate the Germans, but still stuck to his theory of unifying earth by nitrogen. The only way to persuade men that earth is holy was to show them the leveling effect of explosives. The war was pretty terrible, but he thought it much less terrible than might have been expected in an age so scientific.

Jean had seen for a month that there was no returning to college. Her mother needed her, and she was happy to stay. Studying chemistry was out of the question, but she would perfect herself in Ojibway and she would read Lucretius.

The latter enterprise was quickly accomplished. She who loved her Vergil had no difficulty with the hexameters of the great forerunner of chemistry. It interested her to think of everything as made of atoms, and it was more decent to regard Iphigenia’s soul as made of atoms than to cut Iphigenia’s throat.

She had dried a lot of blueberries in the Indian fashion, and canned three sorts of berries, and made jelly of choke-cherries. So she sent Horatio a Thanksgiving box of goodies all the way to France.

By way of silent comfort she had received a gift from a young Indian, the Bluebird. It was a collie pup who lacked a name. She dubbed him Agricola, in honor of Julius Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus. Agricola understood three languages perfectly, and she thought she’d better teach him Latin.