But the boy shook his head. Here, confronting a great loneliness, he was feeling the contrast between the land, whose children called it God's country, and his own meagre hills, where the creeks bore such names as Pestilence and Hell-fer-sartain. "I _couldn't_ go to Louisville, sir. I couldn't pay my board or buy decent clothes there. I've got that little patch of ground up there and the cabin on it, though. I'd aimed to go back there--I'll soon be of age, now--and seek to get elected clerk of the court." "Why clerk of the court? Why not the legislature?" The boy grinned. "The legislature was what I aimed at--until I read the constitution. About the only job I'm not too young for is the clerkship." McCalloway nodded. "I see no reason why you shouldn't make that race, but you'll be a fitter servant of your people for knowing a bit more of the world. As to the money, I've arranged that--though you'll have to live frugally. There will be to your credit, in bank, enough to keep you for a year or two--and if I shouldn't get back--Colonel Wallifarro has my will. I want you to live at my house when you're in the mountains--and look after things--my small personal effects." But for that plan of financing his future, Boone had a stout refusal, until the soldier stopped in the road and laid a hand on his shoulder. "I have never had a son," he said simply. "I have always wanted one. Will you refuse me?" It was a very painful day for both of them, but when at last Boone stood under the railroad shed and saw the man who was his idol wave his hat from the rear platform, he waved his own in return, and smiled the twisted smile of stiff lips. On the ninth of February, as the boy glanced at the morning paper before he started for his first class, he saw headlines that brought a creep to his scalp, and the hand that held the paper trembled. Admiral Togo's fleet was steaming, with decks cleared for action, off Port Arthur--already a Japanese torpedo-boat flotilla had attacked and battered the Russian cruisers that crouched like grim watchdogs at the harbour's entrance--already the gray sea-monsters flying the sun-flag had ripped out their cannonading challenge to the guns of the coast batteries! There had yet been no declaration of war--and the world, which had wearied of the old story of unsuccessful treaty negotiations, rubbed astonished eyes to learn that overnight a volcano of war had burst into eruption--that lava-spilling for which the Empire of Nippon had been building for a silent but determined decade. Boone was late for his classes that day--and so distrait and inattentive that his instructors thought he must be ill. To himself he was saying, with that ardour that martial tidings bring to young pulses, "Why couldn't he have taken me along with him?" CHAPTER XXI