sort of book. It is funny. Rookie, don't you think it's funny?"

Raven remembered a character in Mr. Owen Wister's "Virginian," the hen crazed by her thwarted destiny.

"Well," he said, quoting "The Virginian," "not so damned funny either. But how the dickens did you know what I was going to say?"

"Because it's what we've all come back to," said she, "and what everybody that stayed at home feels, or ought to if they've got anything inside their nuts. Just think, Rookie! we were like the great multitude in the Bible, somewhere, praising God. We broke our idols and—I don't know what we didn't do. And now we're not scared any more, we've set 'em up again: same old idols. Rookie, I bet you the only reason we ever sacrificed to God at all was because we thought He was the biggest joss and things were so desperate and all, we'd better make a sure thing of it. And now we think we aren't in any particular danger, seems as if the little gods would do, same as they did before; and they're not so expensive."

"Goodness, Nan!" said Raven, "how naughty you are. You didn't use to run on so."

"I haven't talked very much to you," said Nan drily, "not since I grew up."

He knew it was true, and knew also that the reason was, if she had allowed her lips to utter it, "Aunt Anne wouldn't let me."

"But," she said, "I don't understand altogether. I know you're mad and discouraged and all the rest of it. But I don't see what Dick has got to do with it."

"It's simply this," said Raven. "I'm going away."

She looked at him in what seemed to be serious alarm.

"Relief work?" she asked. "Reconstruction?"

"No," said Raven. "I don't believe I should be any good to them. There isn't a blamed thing I can do, so far as I see, except for what money I've got. I'm no good, Nan. I shouldn't sell for my hide and horns. And I hate the whole blamed show. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the system, from the beasts that devour one another to the rest of us. And I'm simply going to desert. I'm going to run away."

"Where?" asked Nan. "You can't run away from the earth."

"No," said Raven, "I can't jump off. So I'm going to do the next convenient thing. I'm going up to Wake Hill and shovel snow with Jerry, and maybe get into the woods and do some thinning out and, if I remember anything about the millennium we've just shaved the edge of, just say to myself there ain't a-going to be no millenium, so I can shut up."

"You've taken advice, haven't you?" she concluded. "That's what they've prescribed. I suppose it's all right."

"Good God, no!" said Raven. "Do you think I've been to a doctor and turned myself inside out? I'm going because Wake Hill is as far out of the world as I can manage. If the whole earth hadn't gone crazy, I'd cut stick for Tartary or some confounded place that isn't on the map. But they're all on the map. There isn't an inch of ground that isn't under some sort of moral searchlight. No, I'll be hanged if it's moral. It's only the mites in the cheese getting busy and stirring up fermentation."

Nan laughed out and then looked up at him in her rueful apology.

"I couldn't help it," she said. "I thought of Dick, your telling him. Dick's just got his book ready for the printer: Democracy, you know, in three-legged verse. And they'll say it's full of insight and prophecy. That's what they said about the other one: insight, prophecy! But Dick won't have the least idea what you're driving at."

"You see," said Raven, "he's thinking of doing some stiff work and getting a degree: a sort of sop to his mother. She's as wild as a hawk, you know, to get him to distinguish himself, doesn't much care how. I'd meant to ask him to camp here with me this winter. I believe I did actually ask him, now I think of it."

"Yes, you did," said Nan. "It'll make a lot of difference to him, your being away."

"I don't think so," said Raven. "Anyhow, he'll have to get used to it, especially as I'm not merely going away. I'm getting out, out of the business and all."

He was really surprising her now. She had grown up in the atmosphere of belief in that particular business. When a Hamilton said his earthly creed, he would have begun, if he had been honest, "I believe in wool."

"You're not retiring?" she hesitated.

"Yes."

"Made your pile, Rookie?"

At once they thought of Anne and the new complication she had saddled him with.

"That isn't the question," he evaded. "The amount of it is, I couldn't go to the office every morning and come home and go the next day, without—well, Nan, frankly, going off my nut. I hate it. I hate the whole business of what we call civilized life. I even think of giving Dick power of attorney and passing all my stuff over into his hands."

"Oh, no," said Nan quickly, "you mustn't do that."

He frowned at her, perplexedly.

"Don't you trust him?" he asked. "Don't you trust Dick?"

"Of course I trust Dick," said she impatiently, "his intentions, that is."

"You ought to," said Raven. "You're bound to, the man you're going to marry."

She kept her eyes on him, but she said nothing. And suddenly Raven realized that he wanted to know about this business of marrying Dick. He wanted to know tremendously. Yet, though this was the little Nan who sometimes used to seem more his child than anybody's, he could not ask her. She looked difficult, if not wayward.

"Well," he compromised, "that's about where it is. I'm going into the country, to get away from the clack of men. My income, all but the little of it I set aside for food and taxes, will go to France. It may go through Dick or it may——Oh, well, well," he added, seeing the quick rebuttal again on her face, "that hasn't got to be decided in a hurry. But ultimately it goes to France."

"Why France?" asked Nan. "I see, though. They're all deserting her."

"It isn't altogether that," said Raven, as if he hadn't finished thinking it out. "It's because I believe in her so tremendously, that quick intelligence of hers. She mustn't be downed, mustn't be kept depleted. It's a loss too horrible to face. She sees the world as it is. She knows the dangers. She's got to be protected from them, so she can go on seeing."

"What does she see?" asked Nan curiously. "What kind of thing?"

"Everything. Life. When it comes to what the collective brain can do, you can't limit her. You never'll make her believe in miracles, but she can find out how they're done."

"Mercy!" said Nan. "You talk like a book."

"Notes, for an essay: 'France.' I've been thinking 'em out. How she ought to be given a hand, so she doesn't have to spend the next thirty years or so outwitting the German devil. That's hard sledding for her beautiful intelligence. She ought to be safe, so she can turn it to other things: the science of living, hers, ours, everybody's."

"Ah," said Nan, "but they'll tell you it won't be for everybody: only France."

"That's the point," said Raven. "It's a gamble. But they can't deny she's got the beautiful intelligence. I can trust anything so perfect. I trust it absolutely."

"Why don't we do it ourselves? Build a fire under us, Rookie. Come on!"

"We aren't homogeneous," said Raven. "We've no race spirit, no live nerve through the whole of us. France has. That mind of hers, that leaping intelligence! If she were as holy as she is keen, she'd make the world the poets dreamed of."

"Then go to it," said Nan. "Turn in your money. I will mine. Stump you!"

"Not yet," said Raven. "You sit tight and see how I come out. I haven't got enough to set the Seine afire, but such as it is, I'd like to turn it over to her for what she needs most: agriculture, schools, research. Administered so it could be withdrawn if she didn't make good and turned in somewhere else. Oh, it's a gamble! I told you it was. But administered, mind you. That's the point."

"Through Dick," she commented, plainly with dissatisfaction. "Now, why Dick?"

"Because," said Raven, "Dick's