For Boone the approaching summer was no longer a period of zestful anticipation. During that whole term he had looked eagerly ahead to those coming months back in the hills, when with the guidance of his wise friend he should plunge into the wholesome excitement of canvassing his district. Now McCalloway was gone. And just before commencement a letter from Anne brought news that made his heart sink. "Father is going home to England for the summer," she said, "and that means that I won't get to the hills. I'm heartbroken over it, and it isn't just that 'I always miss the hills,' either. I do miss them. Every dogwood that I see blooming alone in somebody's front yard, every violet in the grass, makes me homesick for the places where beauty isn't only sampled but runs riot--but there's a more personal note than that." "You must climb old Slag-face for me, Boone, and write me all about it. If a single tree has blown down, don't fail to tell me, dear." There was also another thing which would cloud his return to Marlin County. He could, in decency, no longer defer a painful confession to Happy. So far, chance had fended it off, but now she was back from the settlement school for good, and he was through college. In justice to her further silence could not be maintained. Then May brought the Battle of the Yalu. First there were only meagre newspaper reports--all that Boone saw before commencement--and later when the filtration of time brought the fuller discussions in the magazines, and the world had discovered General Kuroki, he was in the hills where magazines rarely came. Upon the wall of General Prince's law office hung a map of the Manchurian terrain, and each day that devotee of military affairs took it down, and, with black ink and red ink, marked and remarked its surface. On one occasion, when Colonel Wallifarro found him so employed, the two leaned over, with their heads close, in study of the situation. "This Kuroki seems to be a man of mystery, General," began Wallifarro. "And it has set me to speculating. The correspondents hint that he's not a native Japanese. They tell us that he towers in physical as well as mental stature above his colleagues." "I can guess your thought, Tom," smiled General Prince. "And the same idea occurred to me. You are thinking of the two Japanese agents who came to the hills--and of McCalloway's sudden departure on a secret journey. But it's only a romantic assumption. I followed the Chinese-Japanese War with a close fidelity of detail--and Kuroki, though less conspicuous than nowadays, was even then prominent." Tom Wallifarro bit the end from a cigar and lighted it. "It is none the less to be assumed that McCalloway is over there," he observed. "Emperors don't send personal messengers half way round the world to call unimportant men to the colours."