“That’s where I got it,” returned the appreciative Buddy. “Some of those old guys could sure sling the up-to-date stuff.” “Bring me the Old Testament.” Jeremy looked up the text and, to his surprise, verified the exact words. But when he saw the context he laughed. And that evening he made one of his rare calls. “Isaiah is no prophet so far as The Guardian is concerned,” he declared to Miss Pritchard. “And the style of that sting rings familiar. Where did you get it?” “It was written on the margin of an old Guardian.” Jeremy raised questioning eyes to her face. Miss Pritchard nodded. “Yes,” she said. “She was back in Berne when that was sent.” “All right?” Jeremy was conscious that his voice was less _insouciant_ than he could have wished. “Quite. She will go back to Germany after the war, I suppose.” “Will you give her a message for me?” “If you wish.” The dry, slightly hesitant tone meant, “If you _will_ be so foolish.” “Tell her for The Guardian,” said Jem, “that this feller has n’t laid down. Tell her that he won’t lay down”--he paused, and then completed the paraphrase--“though Hell from beneath is moved for him to meet him at his coming.” “Put that on your editorial page,” said Miss Pritchard, with a thrill in her voice. “I’d like Marcia to see it there.” “Perhaps I will when the day comes,” he answered and took his leave. It was the first message that he had sent to Marcia Ames since they had parted at the door of the Pritchard mansion nearly four years before. Every sense of her, every thought of her, was as vivid, unblurred, untainted by time as if she had gone from him yesterday: “the loveliness that wanes not, the Love that ne’er can wane.” Now, even by so tenuous a thread as his impersonal message for The Guardian, he held to her again. And in his heart sang something lesser but sweeter than hope. CHAPTER VI WORDS occasionally take epidemic form. Such was the course of the word “hyphen” through the United States in the year 1916, with its alternate phases, “hyphenate” and “hyphenated.” Centralia, however, established a quarantine against the terms. They were checked at the borders of the State. Where they did creep in and break out into print, it was but a sporadic appearance, the references being both cautious and resentful that such a characterization should be allowed to the license of an unbridled Eastern press. None was willing to admit that the hyphen could be an issue in the future.