"There'll be a war when they get there, all right, Ralph, and no man could hold Nikola now. Make a note of their going, won't you?"
If you will examine the personal column of the Sabinsport _Argus_ for July 29, 1914, you will find among other items, this:
"Nikola Petrovitch, Yovan Markovitch, and Marta Popovitch, all of the 'Emma' mine, left at 10:30 this morning for New York. They expect to sail at once for Serbia, where they will join the army which has been called into the field by Austria's declaration of war. Hope to see you back soon, boys."
And thus it was that the Great War first came to Sabinsport.
A ripple of interest ran over a few quarters of Sabinsport when it read of the sudden departure of three Serbian miners. At the banks, and in the offices of the mills and factories, men sniffed or swore, "Doesn't a man know when he is well off? I don't understand how a steady fellow like Nikola Petrovitch can do such a crazy thing. Who is going to take care of his family?" This was the usual business view.
A few members of the Ladies' Aid of Dick's church grumbled to him. "We will have that family on our hands again. Couldn't you stop him?"
It was momentary interest only. Austria's declaration of war had not entered their minds. Dick felt that if he had asked some of the members of his congregation who had declared war, they might have said, "Serbia." The repeated shocks of the news of the next few days battered down indifference. Each night and each morning there fell into the community facts--terrible, unbelievable--stunning and horrifying it. Germany had invaded Belgium. She was battering down Liège. Why, what did it mean? England had declared war on Germany. She was calling out an army, but what for? And we--we were to be neutral, of course. We had nothing to do with it.
The town discussed the news of that dreadful week in troubled voices, reading the paper line by line, curious, awed--but quite detached. The first sense of connection came when the _Argus_ announced that Patsy McCullon was lost. The last her family had heard of her she was in Belgium. They had cabled--could get no word. Now Patsy was Sabinsport's pride.
She was an example, so High Town said, of what a girl could make of herself, though as a matter of fact better backing than Patsy had for her achievement it would be hard to find. Her father and mother were of the reliable Scotch stock which had come a hundred years before to the country near Sabinsport. Here Patsy's grandfather had settled and prospered. Here her father had been born and here he still carried on the original McCullon farm. He had married a "native" like himself, and like himself well-to-do. They had worked hard and they had to show for their efforts as comfortable and attractive a place as the district boasted--not a "show farm," like Ralph Cowder's, but clean, generous acres--many of them--substantial buildings always shining with fresh paint, herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, gardens, vines, orchards.