Yes, he would find a way through!

He wasn’t looking forward eagerly to war, yet he must take it as he had taken all the rest, a way to attain on earth, or to reach heaven if there was a heaven.

He drew a deep, heavy sigh.

Thoughts like these were unprofitable. He must get on. There were people in the village he must see. His old employer was a grim, silent man, but he had been kindly at the end and had even allowed a small bonus on the last few months’ work. He wanted to thank him for that kindness. Then there was a small bank account he must look after. A teacher in the high school to thank, who had given good advice and helped him to understand some of the difficulties that might have hindered him. He must not forget any who had been his friends. They might have forgotten him by this time, doubtless had, for the months had been long and there were many boys coming and going about the village. But still he would feel better to have hunted them all out and thanked them for their kindness.

A flight of purple grackles soared across the sky and dropped their bright iridescent blackness down among the autumn trees. They scattered on the ground, searching for favorite foods, filling the air with their strange fall sounds, those sounds that make summer seem so definitely a thing of the past and the autumn sunshine only a passing gesture. Phil turned his eyes to the scene he was passing and remembered days when he had wandered alone wishing for things that never came. There was a great flat stone by the roadside. He had sat there the morning he got the thorn in his foot and tried to extract it. There was the big tree whose gnarled roots had made an armchair where he came to study now and then when he had some hard task to master. It was cushioned with velvet moss. Sometimes when he had been sitting there for a while he would get the idea that maybe in the future something nice would happen to him and then he could forget all the gloom and drabness of his life and be really happy. Yes? He had actually believed that. And now look what was happening! Just out of college! No job, no special friends, no opportunity to forge into things and do something really worthwhile. War ahead! Just war! Life in a training camp! It hadn’t been very exciting so far. And then what? Nothing to get excited or happy about. Joy? Maybe there wasn’t any such thing as joy in this earth anyway, although he had always fancied that he saw other people having it.

Well, he mustn’t get morbid. It certainly hadn’t been a cheerful thing to come to his grandfather’s old farm and the little cemetery. Still he had to come and see that everything was all right before he went back into camp and would no longer be able to order his life as he pleased. He had to be sure he wanted to sell.

Then, with another deep sigh, he swung his car around the curve of the hill, jolting along over the stony way, and there, right ahead of him, was a car standing with its hood open and a girl in front of it looking anxiously toward him. Fool girl getting in his way! He almost ran over her! Why did girls always have to get in the way? This was no road for a girl to be on anyway, a cattle path! How did she get here?

He ground on his brakes and came to an abrupt halt before her.

“I beg your pardon,” he said politely. “Are you having engine trouble?”

“Yes, but I don’t know what it is.” The girl lifted her very blue eyes apologetically, and instantly he wondered where he had seen those eyes before. Yet of course that was absurd. He didn’t have much to do with girls, especially not out here in the country. He’d never had anything to do with girls, even in school, when he lived on Crimson Mountain.