It was this having so much to do that not only saved Dick, but it had saved Sabinsport, for Sabinsport had gone into the war without enthusiasm. She had accepted it fully as a thing she was obliged in honor to carry through, but Dick felt more and more that neither her heart was touched nor her spirit fired. He could not get over the chill that her reception of the news that war had been declared had given him--not a bell rang, not a whistle blew, not a man stopped work. "Well, we are in it," they said as they met him on the street. "It's all right."--"Nothing else to do."--"I'm for it." That would be all, and the speaker would walk away with bent head. How, Dick asked himself, a great wave of doubt coming over him, could a town so unmoved, even if so determined, ever carry out the prodigious piece of work which the Government asked of it, at the time the declaration was made? They were to put everything in--their sons, their money, their industries, were to be conscripted. They were to be asked to change all their ways of living, and to do it at once. How could it be that a town, seemingly so unstirred, would so completely strip itself as Sabinsport was asked to do? Could this determination, which he believed was in her, carry her through the period of sacrifice and effort? Was she to have none of the help of pride, the consciousness of a great cause? How far would Sabinsport go? The first test came when the Government announced that we were to have an army of two million men, chosen on the principle of universal liability to service. "Never," declared the Rev. Mr. Pepper, "would Sabinsport stand for that." And there were not a few in mills and mines, not a few representatives of various peace parties, that gathered about him. They loudly declared in the _Pro Bono Publico_ column of the _Argus_ that we had been plunged into war against our will, that it was still possible to negotiate, that the American people wanted to negotiate, that the President was playing a hypocrite's part, that he was a puppet of Wall Street, whose only interest was to protect foreign loans and to carry on munition making. The Rev. Mr. Pepper, encouraged by the swift gathering of pacifists around him, engaged the Opera House and called for a great mass meeting of protest. Sabinsport should have a right to vote on our going into the war, if it had been denied to the rest of the country. What would Sabinsport do? Dick asked himself the question a little anxiously. Would she foregather at the Opera House?