“I’m not like that, sir.”

“Of course not. But there is yet another element in the calculation. You may have to leave Williams Ford because of the conscription. And the thought that runs through many boys’ minds is, if I must leave, then perhaps I ought to leave on my own hook, and find my destiny on a city’s streets rather than in a battalion of the Athabaska Brigade… and you’re good to deny it, Adam, but you wouldn’t be human if such ideas didn’t cross your mind.”

“No, sir,” I muttered, and I must admit I felt a dawning guilt, for I had in fact been a little seduced by Julian’s tales of city life, and Sam’s dubious lessons, and the HISTORY OF MANKIND IN SPACE—perhaps I had forgotten something of my obligations to the village that lay so still and so inviting in the blue near distance.

“I know,” Ben Kreel said, “that things haven’t always been easy for your family. Your father’s faith, in particular, has been a trial, and we haven’t always been good neighbors—speaking on behalf of the village as a whole. Perhaps you’ve been left out of some activities other boys enjoy as a matter of course: church activities, picnics, common friendships… well, even Williams Ford isn’t perfect. But I promise you, Adam: if you find yourself in the Brigades, especially if you find yourself tested in time of war, you’ll discover that the same boys who shunned you in the dusty streets of your home town become your best friends and bravest defenders, and you theirs. For our common heritage ties us together in ways that may seem obscure, but become obvious under the harsh light of combat.”

I had spent so much time smarting under the remarks of other boys (that my father “raised vipers the way other folks raise chickens,” for example) that I could hardly credit Ben Kreel’s assertion. But I knew little of modern warfare, except what I had read in the novels of Mr. Charles Curtis Easton, so it might be true. And the prospect (as was intended) made me feel even more shame-faced.