"I wonder," said Ralph inadvertently, "if Patsy has heard from that Henry Laurence she wrote so much about?" "She hears from Mrs. Laurence, but not at all from Henry, I think, Ralph. Why?--" "Oh, nothing," he said, suddenly cheerful, then added, sagely, "Such an experience as they went through together would naturally draw two young people together." CHAPTER IV Dick was coming in from a five days' walking trip. He had fled from town on Monday, seeking what the road and the sweet early May air and greenery would do for his jumping nerves and tormented mind. "Forget the war," counseled Ralph, when he telephoned he was off. He had done it fairly well. Spring is a lovely thing in the highlands around Sabinsport. It covers the earth with delicate blossoms, turns the brown tracery of the trees to soft yellows and reds and greens, peoples the air with songsters. It was early this year, and had opened the doors of the farmhouses--started gardens, set men to plowing fields, women to sewing on the porches, children to wandering in the woods. Dick walked without other compass than his own experienced sense of direction and distance, shunning highways, following lanes and little-used roads, stopping only when the day grew dusky and sleeping by preference in friendly farmhouses. It was Saturday morning, warm, brilliant, fragrant. He would be in Sabinsport by noon, he calculated. How changed he was! How rested! How bright things seemed again! It would be good to get back. He believed he could preach to-morrow. It should be of the healing of the air and the sun. It was ten o'clock when he struck Jo's Mills, as it was called--a tiny settlement slightly up a hill from the point where a gray old mill stood on the edge of a stream which took a long tumble here. There were a half dozen, comfortable, old-time, white houses on the street, with apple-trees and lilacs and gardens. There was a big general store--relic of early days when things were busy--only half occupied now--a church--a school--a post-office in the wing of Miss Sally Black's house--a neat, prim post-office where nobody warmed his back long--though Miss Sally was not above keeping everybody long enough to feel out the news. There was a public telephone in the post-office, and over this it was the custom of the Sabinsport operators to communicate to Miss Sally anything particularly important. It was evident to Dick as he approached that Miss Sally must have received something that the neighbors were interested in, for there was a little group standing around, looking rather glum. He stopped and quite instinctively inquired, "What's the news?" "Well," said one of the men--"it don't sound good to me--mebbe 'tain't so--they say the Germans have sunk a ship--a big one with a lot of Americans and women and children--didn't give no notice--nothing--just sunk 'em."