CHAPTER VII. BAD TIDINGS CONFIRMED “I wish I knew what you were talking about,” said Mollie, pausing with a sandwich half-way to her mouth, while Amy and Grace regarded the Little Captain with astonishment. “What names? Where?” But Betty was paying no attention to them. She was reading hastily the column that had caught her startled attention. “Listen to this,” she said, reading out loud. “Among those who were killed in the last great Allied offensive are the names of these brave soldiers. James Browning of Columbus, Ohio! No, that isn’t what I mean! Look, here they are! James Dempsey and Arnold Dempsey, Junior. Girls, do you suppose!” and she looked at them with widening eyes. “Arnold Dempsey, Arnold Dempsey,” repeated Mollie, searching in her memory, but Amy interrupted excitedly. “That was Professor Dempsey’s name, wasn’t it?” she asked. “Oh, Betty, do you suppose it could be his son?” “Why, of course it is his son! how could it be any one else?” cried Grace, the excitement beginning to communicate itself to her. “Arnold Dempsey, Junior! and the professor said his sons were over there.” “Didn’t it say something about James Dempsey, too, Betty?” asked Mollie, fairly snatching the paper from her chum. “Yes, here it is. Do you suppose that can be his other son?” Betty shook her head soberly. “I don’t know,” she said. “Of course he didn’t tell us the name of his other son, but it might easily be James. Oh, I hope it isn’t so!” she added, her heart aching for the lonely old man whose one big interest in life was his boys. “I do hope there has been some mistake.” “I guess we all do,” said Amy gently, adding with a sigh: “But I’m afraid there isn’t very much hope of it. The Government is usually right when it comes to things like that.” “Not always,” Mollie retorted quickly. “Look at the time they reported that Allen was among the missing and he wasn’t at all. That is the only mistake we happen to know about, but I fancy there are plenty of others.” At mention of that dreadful time when she had read Allen’s name in the long list of the missing, Betty experienced again something of the emotion she had felt at that time. She saw again in imagination the dark room where she had gone to be by herself, she heard the thunder of the surf on the rocks outside and the rumble of the thunder overhead. She saw once more the vision of Allen as she had seen it then. Allen stretched out cold and dead perhaps on some shell-ridden battlefield or perhaps, more terrible still, a prisoner in the hands of the Hun, suffering unspeakable torture!! “But this is not as bad as though the boys were missing,” she said suddenly, speaking her thought aloud. “At least the professor will know that his sons are dead.” The girls started and looked at Betty queerly.