terest in orders and accounts collectable. He wrote to Mr. Fuller about it and received a reply advising him to accept, as the amount would exactly cancel the balance owing.
As the balance was fifteen thousand, this answer was puzzling, until David received, through Fuller's bank in Itanaca, one of his notes for five thousand dollars stamped "paid and cancelled."
Knowing Mr. Fuller, David had no illusion that the cancelling of this note was a bit of philanthropy and it was equally impossible that it was a mistake. At once David suspected the truth; Alice had paid the note. She had done as he had believed she would do when he had been thinking about her that night he sailed by her windows on the I'll Show You! she was sending him to war. And sending him, she would keep as long as she lived—if he did not return—the home where she had been with him.
He sold out his business and paid his debt to Mr. Fuller and, owing only to Alice, he went to Fort Sheridan when war was declared.
It was a stern and very serious course of training which he underwent for a brief, intensive period. The citizens' camp of the year before seemed almost like play in comparison; this, plainly was a prelude to war. It absorbed him, excited him, exhausted him for he went into it with all his energy. He could not go at anything half way and he liked to work not only with his muscles but with his mind, too.
He liked mathematics and the instructors were eager for men with strong bodies and clear, vigorous minds
