"Only three weeks ago," Dick said to himself, shuddering, when the letter came to him, "and what is going on in Dinant to-day?" for, knowing the land foot by foot, he realized how inevitable it was that the town must be engulfed in the Namur-Charleroi battle, the result of which in the light of the three weeks since Patsy had written her heading, he had no doubt. "My dear Folks:--It is just ten days since I mailed you a letter. That was in Paris. We were starting out. It was all so gay then. The world has changed. It is all so anxious now. It is not for any tangible reason--nothing I could tell you. I suppose what has happened to me is that I have caught what is in the air. It is like an infection--this stern, tense expectancy that pervades France. To-day we reached Dinant, this lovely little playboy of a town, its feet in the Meuse, its head wearing an old old citadel on a cliff grown up with trees and ferns. You would love it so, Mother McCullon. And here it is the same watchful, dangerous quiet. There have been rumors of war for many days, you know. The French papers, which I've read diligently, were full of forecastings and queer political calculations which I didn't understand and which Mr. Laurence said were not to be taken seriously. It didn't seem credible to me that because a crazy fellow in a little under-sized country like Serbia had killed even a Grand Duke that a great country like Austria should declare war on her, particularly when she's eaten as much humble pie as Serbia has. And even if she did, I cannot see for the life of me what Russia has to do with it or why France should be alarmed. "I only know that it seems as if the very air held its breath, as if every living thing was about to spring and kill--I can't escape it. Perhaps it would not have caught me as it has if I had not been so close to the frontier. When I wrote you ten days ago--it seems a year--I told you that we were to follow the frontier from Belfort through Toul and Verdun with a side trip to Metz, then on to Maubeuge and into Belgium. The men have a passion for forts, and they were obliged to go to Metz for business. "On the evening of the 28th, just as we reached Verdun, the news came that Austria had at last declared war. We got into town all right and they took us into the hotel, but I thought we'd never get out. The air suddenly seemed to rain soldiers--and suspicion--the street swarmed with people and nobody talked or smiled.