The moment that his father came home Murray went to him with the news he had obtained in Gay Street. The two had a long conference, during which Murray discovered his father to be watching him with a peculiar expression, as if surprised to find this reserved son so ready with suggestions. Mr. Townsend shook his head over the notion that Forrest could have carried his revolt against authority so far as to have taken the step of enlisting in the army; but when Murray urged that the clue should be followed up, the elder man said slowly: "I don’t know whether it would do any good to hunt him up and bring him home. He’s taken things into his own hands. I feel like letting him manage his own affairs for a while. He has n’t the force of character to deprive himself of the comforts of life very long. If he has enlisted, he ’d better take the consequences. I ’m not so sure but a term of service in the army would do him good, take the conceit out of him, and show him that he cannot escape discipline anywhere;--life itself means discipline of one sort or another." "If we should find he had enlisted, then, you wouldn’t take the steps to get him off? You could, you know, sir, since he ’s under age. Peter says so." "Peter? Peter who?" "Peter Bell--in Gay Street." "Oh, yes. You see a good deal of the Bells, Murray?" "Yes, sir." "I don’t think I should apply to have him released from service," said Mr. Townsend, slowly, grim lines settling about his mouth. A week went by. At its close a second briefly letter arrived from Forrest, addressed to his mother. It stated that Forrest had enlisted in the army, and had, at his own application, been allowed to join a regiment just leaving for San Francisco, to be sent for a term of three years’ service in the Philippines. By the time the letter reached home, Forrest would have sailed. The letter was written in a spirit of boyish bravado, like the first, but although it upset Mrs. Townsend again and sent her back to her bed, it relieved the tension of the family. It furnished definite news of the young fellow’s whereabouts, and made it possible to communicate with him when he should have reached his destination. Mrs. Townsend spent many days thereafter in urging her husband to apply at headquarters to have her son returned. It could be done, she was sure, because the boy was but nineteen, and having enlisted without his father’s permission, must have misrepresented his age at the recruiting-station. But Mr. Townsend remained firm. He said that Forrest, having chosen this course, must abide by it, at least for the term of service for which he had enlisted. He would not have a turncoat for a son, he said sternly, although with a suspicious lowering of the voice; and he was more and more impressed with the conviction that the hard realities of life would make a man out of Forrest if the stuff of which men are made was in him.