Throughout the address of the Herr Professor Koerner, young Mr. Robson sat absently making notes. The notes were wholly irrelevant to the learned envoy’s speech. Yet it was an interesting, even a significant speech, had there been any in those easy days, to appreciate its significance. The learned representative of German propaganda impressed upon his hearers the holy purpose of Deutschtum. German ties must be maintained; German habits and customs of life and above all the German speech must be piously fostered at whatever distance from the Fatherland, to the end that, in the inevitable day when Germany’s oppressors, jealous of her power and greatness, should force her to draw the sword in self-defense, every scion of German blood might rally to her, against the world, if need be. Amidst the “Hochs!” and “Sehr guts!” which punctuated the oratory, the negligent reporter for The Record sat sketching the outlines of his word-picture of the stripling in the gallery and the magnate in the box, standing to honor their country’s anthem, amidst the amused and patronizing wonderment of the Federated German Societies of Centralia. As the session drew to a close, he left. Magnus Laurens had already gone. By good fortune, young Jeremy Robson caught a glimpse of his square and powerful figure, emerging from the crowd and going down a side street. A girl in a riding-habit was with him. In the bearing of her slender body, in the poise of the little head with its tight-packed strands of tawny hair, Jeremy Robson caught a hint of a subtle and innate quality, something gallant and proud and challenging. He overtook them. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Laurens. My name is Robson. I’m a reporter for The Record. Could I have a word with you?” The water-power magnate turned upon him a face of mingled annoyance and amusement. “This is what I get for making a spectacle of myself, I take it,” he grumbled. “What do you want to know? Why I did it?” “No. That’s plain enough. Who was the boy in the balcony?” “Boy?” repeated Mr. Laurens in surprise. “Yes. The kid that stood up when they began ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Do you know him?” “Let me refer that question to Miss Marcia Ames. She was right at the spot, in the balcony. Miss Ames, Mr. Robson.” Jeremy bowed and found himself looking into two large, young, and extremely self-possessed grayish eyes, frank and happy eyes on the surface, but with inscrutable lights and depths beneath. For the rest, his hasty impression recorded an alert, intelligent, and delicately slanted face, and an almost disconcertingly direct regard. The skin was of that translucent brown-over-pink which the sun god bestows only upon his tried and true acolytes. “Do you know the boy, Miss Ames?” “What boy?” Her voice was cool and liquid and endearing, and just a bit lazily indifferent, with a strange hint--never anything more--of accent. “The boy who stood in the first row of the balcony.” “That was not a boy.” “No?” “That was I.”