"I must think this over a little before I speak to mother about it," he thought, after he had turned into the street and as soon as he was capable of thinking--such had been the blow of the message. The shadow of the statue lay across his path at the time. He looked up at the ancestor questioningly. The ancestor kept on charging British redcoats. Dr. Sanford took a long way around back to the house. Every familiar landmark seemed to recall some boyhood anecdote of Phil. If only there had been two boys or a girl! With all of his thinking he was blank-minded when he sat down in his favourite chair on the porch. "What's happened, dear?" Mrs. Sanford asked at once. She knew his signs of emotion better than the telegraph girl. "Why, I have another cable from Phil," he replied. "Is he ill or hurt? Don't hold back--I want to know!" "No, he's well. It isn't that. It's--well--it's asking our permission----" "I know! He wants to fight!" Now, how could she guess that? But she was an amazing woman, as he had often said. "Yes." He passed the cablegram to her. "I'm not surprised," she said, after reading it. "I'd been fearing it all along." "Yes, he could not stand by and see such wrong done without wanting to strike his blow. I honour him for it." "But he's Phil--the only boy we have!" "I am leaving it to you," the Doctor concluded. "He will not if you say not." "We'll think it over," said Mrs. Sanford. When they broke silence and began a discussion of the pros and cons it was only to return to silence; for they were merely rehearsing the heads of trains of thought that occurred to both of them in a vicious circle. At the supper table Jane realised that something was wrong, and poignantly wrong. "If it's about Phil," she blurted out, "I guess I'm entitled to know!" When they told her, she said: "Against that thieving Kaiser and for them poor little Belgiums! He just couldn't help it! That's Phil all over. But it ain't the United States' war, it's Europe's; and all I've got to say is that maybe he'll never come back. He'll just be killed and buried over in them furrin parts." "We've thought of that, Jane," replied Mrs. Sanford. "You're going to let him do it!" gasped Jane. "He won't, though, if you say not." "Buried in furrin parts!" Jane repeated in fresh horror. This was the most awful aspect of it to her. If one insisted on being killed it ought to be at home, where he could be laid in the family plot. After supper the Doctor and Mrs. Sanford went into the study, though it was early September and hot. There they sat silent as the flow of still waters which run deep. "I leave it to you and to him," she said quietly, after a time. Dr. Sanford hunted in his desk and found a telegraph blank, and rapidly in his fine, small hand which was suggestive of his mental self-possession when he had a pen between his fingers, he wrote: