sluggish with the fatty degeneration of a sluggard
peace, to quicken and then to throb with the rat-a-tat-tat, the
rat-a-tat-tat of the most peremptory, the most reverberating call to
arms in the history of the world.

In June, 1917, Leon Kantor, answering that rat-a-tat-tat, enlisted.

In November, honed by the interim of training to even a new leanness,
and sailing orders heavy and light in his heart, Lieutenant Kantor, on
two day's home-leave, took leave of his home, which can be cruelest when
it is tenderest.

Standing there in the expensive, the formal, the enormous French parlour
of his up-town apartment de luxe, from not one of whose chairs would his
mother's feet touch floor, a wall of living flesh, mortared in blood,
was throbbing and hedging him in.

He would pace up and down the long room, heavy with the faces of those
who mourn, with a laugh too ready, too facetious in his fear for them.

"Well, well, what is this, anyway, a wake? Where's the coffin? Who's
dead?"

His sister-in-law shot out her plump, watch-incrusted wrist.

"Don't, Leon" she cried. "Such talk is a sin! It might come true."

"Rosie-Posy-butter-ball," he said pausing beside her chair to pinch her
deeply soft cheek. "Cry-baby-roly-poly, you can't shove me off in a
wooden kimono that way."

From his place before the white-and-gold mantel, staring steadfastly at
the floor-tiling, Isadore Kantor turned suddenly, a bit whiter and older
at the temples.

"Don't get your comedy, Leon.

"'Wooden kimono'--Leon?"

"That's the way the fellows at camp joke about coffins, ma. I didn't
mean anything but fun. Great Scott--can't anyone take a joke?"

"O God! O God!" His mother fell to swaying, softly hugging herself
against shivering.

"Did you sign over power of attorney to pa, Leon?"

"All fixed, Izzy."

"I'm so afraid, son, you don't take with you enough money in your
pockets. You know how you lose it. If only you would let mamma sew that
little bag inside your uniform with a little place for bills and a
little place for the asfitidy!"

"Now, please, ma--please! If I needed more, wouldn't I take it? Wouldn't
I be a pretty joke among the fellows, tied up in that smelling stuff?
Orders are orders, ma; I know what to take and what not to take."

"Please, Leon, don't get mad at me, but if you will let me put in your
suitcase just one little box of that salve for your finger tips, so they
don't crack--"

Pausing as he paced to lay chee