"Oh, so-so, I'll get on, my boy," was Roger's quiet answer. For Harold was
not quite the kind he would ever like to ask for aid. Still, if the worst
came to the worst, he would have someone to turn to.
* * * * *
Long after they had left the house, he kept thinking over all they had
said. What an amazing time they had had, the two young scalawags.
Deborah was still in the room. As she sat working at her desk, her back was
turned and she did not speak. But little by little her father's mood
changed. Of course she was right, he admitted. For now they were gone, the
spell they had cast was losing a part of its glamor. Yes, their talk had
been pretty raw. Sheer unthinking selfishness, a bold rush for plunder and
a dash to get away, trampling over people half crazed, women and children
in panicky crowds, and leaving behind them, so to speak, Laura's joyous
rippling laugh over their own success in the game. Yes, there was no
denying the fact that Hal was rushing headlong into a savage dangerous
game, a scramble and a gamble, with adventurers from all over Europe
gathering here and making a little world of their own. He would work and
live at a feverish pitch, and Laura would go it as hard as he. Roger
thought he could see their winter ahead. How they would pile up money and
spend!
All at once, as though some figure silent and invisible were standing close
beside him, from far back in his childhood a memory flashed into his mind
of a keen and clear October night, when Roger, a little shaver of nine, had
stood with his mother in front of the farmhouse and listened to the faint
sharp roll of a single drum far down in the valley.
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