Old Crow

								


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                                    OLD CROW



                                 BY ALICE BROWN

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
All rights reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Copyright, 1922,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1922.

OLD CROW

I

John Raven sat in the library of his shabby, yet dignified Boston house,
waiting for Richard Powell, his nephew, whom he had summoned for an
intimate talk. He was sitting by the fire making a pretense of reading
the evening paper, but really he was prefiguring the coming interview,
dreading it a good deal, and chiefly for the reason that there was an
argument to be presented, and for this he was insufficiently prepared,
and must be, however long it might be delayed. When he telephoned Dick
to come he was at last armed with a bold conviction of being able to
proffer a certain case to him (his own case, in fact); but, as these
last moments went on, he weakened sensibly in any hope he might have had
that Dick would be able to meet him from any illuminating viewpoint of
his own. This was mid-winter, two years after the end of the War, where
Dick and his uncle had worked in the Ambulance Corps to the limit of
their capacities--Dick, no soldier, because of what seemed to him a
diabolic eccentricity of imperfect sight, and Raven, blocked by what he
felt to be the negligible disability of age. John Raven had, with the
beginning of the War--which, as early as 1914 he had decided to be his
war--made up his mind that although he was over forty and of a business
training with inconsiderable excursions into literature, he wanted
nothing so much as to get into the thick of it and the rough of it, so
far as a man might who was past his physical best, and now he was back
again, more fit than when he went, but at this present moment breathless
at the realization that he had been up against life as it actually is,
and that he found it a brute business and hated it. And this was not so
much the horror of life in the field where, however the human heart
cried out against the argument of desecrated flesh, the spirit could
call mightily upon God, challenging Him to grant the chrism of
fulfilment in return for this wild sacrifice of blood, as the horror of
life when peace was exercising her rights in unbelievable ways. This he
was going to explain to Dick, if he could manage it, while he set forth
also his need of retreating from the active scene and leaving some of
his formerly accepted duties on Dick's shoulders. As he sat there,
gaunt, long, lean man, with a thin brown face and the eagle's look, a
fineness of aquiline curve that made him significant in a dominant type,