Again, except for the drumming pencil, the same sickening stillness filled the room. When Mr. Strong was heard outside talking to a member of his staff, the old soldier and the young slacker looked at each other quickly, almost guiltily, as if they had nearly been surprised in a crime. To their relief he turned and descended the stairs, but the Colonel tilted his chair until he could see the courthouse clock, saying drily: "He'll be back in a few minutes. The draft registration is tomorrow. What are we going to do?" Jeb felt as though his body were a sponge that had absorbed all the sickening heaviness extant throughout the world. There was a strong tugging within that demanded of him to cry aloud his intention to enlist, but another personality whimpered desperately, "I can't--I can't!" His own face now was drawn as the Colonel's had been; his eyes seemed filmy, and when he spoke his voice was lifeless. "I know it is," he said. It did not escape the Colonel that Jeb had replied directly to the thing which most concerned him. The draft was his evil fetish; second in importance came the question of what he should do, or whether Mr. Strong might return and be a witness to his disgrace--yet the Colonel even now was unwilling to call it this. Applied to any one else--yes! Treating with any one else he would doubtless have ordered him from the office. But this was the son of his old friend; the boy he had watched with pride, lo! these twenty-six years. One cannot in the batting of an eye shake off an affection so deeply grounded! "Well, sir, I know it, too," he suddenly exclaimed. "I ask you what we are going to do!" "I--I wish I knew," Jeb answered desperately. "I--I want to do something----" "You've _got_ to do something," the interruption came with uncompromising sternness. The door opened and Mr. Strong entered. "Hullo," he cried, with a brevity characteristic of him when hurried. "Would have been here sooner, but that plagued unit had to be got fixed." "What unit are you talking about, Amos?" the Colonel asked, glad and sorry for the interruption. The editor seated himself and began to run a thin steel paper knife through one after another of several unopened letters. "Barrow's," he answered, without turning around. "Barrow's hospital unit--leaves some time tonight; and Wade, the man listed to go from here, dropped a packing box on his foot. Barrow 'phoned me last night, and I've been looking for a suitable man all morning." Nearly everyone in Hillsdale had heard that the great Barrow was heading a hospital unit, and the editor's nearest friends knew that he had been honored with permission to select one man from his own town. Now this man had come to grief! The Colonel looked across at Jeb. He saw at once a miraculous opportunity, and whispered: "Helping about a hospital is a fine work, Jeb. Of course, it isn't like being with the Colors, but it means service--a very noble service!"