We humans adjust ourselves very quickly to new conditions. And, for all the pessimists to the contrary, the human instinct is to laugh. . . . I saw a canvas sign over a small store, on a cross-street impassable at the moment with snowdrifts. It bore the ancient quip, "_Whether the weather be cold or hot, we've got to have weather, whether or not. Buy your Arctic overshoes here._" New York City, that February 10th, thought it was all a good joke. . . . * * * * * Freddie and I had a compartment on the Congressional. We anticipated it would be nearly midnight by the time we got to Washington; Freddie flung himself moodily on the lounge as though he were prepared to sleep all the way, except when we might perhaps order in dinner. Freddie at this time was twenty-seven. I had always liked him, though physically and temperamentally we were quite opposite types. I am typically Dutch, short and wide, heavy-set and stocky. But not fat. Built, as Freddie once told me, along the general lines of a young cart horse. And, as he has also remarked, I have the Dutch phlegmatic sparseness of speech, which in my case, he insists, often turns surly. Freddie, not much taller than I, was slender almost to thinness. But wiry; I have wrestled with him, and he twists like an eel, with surprising strength. A sandy-haired, pale-blue-eyed, freckle-faced fellow, usually grinning, and with a swift, ready flow of speech. His mind not only was alert, but keen. Scientifically inclined; and an extremely good mathematician. He had made good at astronomical work from the start. As a clocker of delicate star-transits, in father's opinion he had no equal; and he could sit all day over tedious routine mathematics and never tire. I eyed him now as he lay on the lounge in our train compartment. It was wholly abnormal for Freddie to be so morose. "Whatever it is father's got to tell me," I commented, "it sits like lead on you, doesn't it?" "Yes," he said abruptly. And he added, "He ordered me to say nothing, so I'm doing it." I found father equally solemn. It was eleven o'clock when, after crossing the snow-filled Washington streets, we reached my home. Father greeted us at the door with what was a very sick attempt at a smile. "Come in, boys. You're lucky to get here at all. Hello, Frederick. Brought your model? That's good--we'll look at it presently. . . . Hello, son--I understand you've been pampering a murderess." In the study, when we had discarded our overclothes, his manner abruptly changed. We sat down, and he stood facing us, and then began restlessly pacing the little circular room, as though undecided how to begin telling me. "Peter," he said at last, "you'll think it's queer that I've said nothing to you--my son--of this--this thing that is upon us now--this catastrophe to the world--"