Page:Tales of the long bow.pdf/313

 hope," said Colonel Crane, "and people don't believe 'em. But people'll say that was a very tall story about the tall trees throwing darts and stones. Afraid it'll come to be a bit of a joke."

"All our battles began as jokes and they will end as jokes," said Owen Hood, staring at the smoke of his cigar as it threaded its way towards the sky in grey and silver arabesque. "They will linger only as faintly laughable legends, if they linger at all; they may pass an idle hour or fill an empty page; and even the man who tells them will not take them seriously. It will all end in smoke like the smoke I am looking at; in eddying and topsy-turvy patterns hovering for a moment in the air. And I wonder how many, who may smile or yawn over them, will realize that where there was smoke there was fire."

There was a silence; then Colonel Crane stood up, a solitary figure in his severe and formal clothes, and gravely said farewell to his hostess. With the failing afternoon light he knew that his own wife, who was a well-known artist, would be abandoning her studio work, and he always looked forward to a talk with her before dinner, which was often a more social function. Nevertheless, as he approached his old home a whim induced him to delay the