g directed toward
both mind and heart. He had come back to be a hero to Althea, with
evidences of his heroism graved on his own bruised form.

"Hasn't he been wonderful!" said Althea to her girl friends; and Albert
volunteered few concrete facts that might qualify or detract from her
ideal.

Those few months comprised his contribution to the cause. He mended more
rapidly than might have been expected, and soon began to feel the
resurgence of those belligerencies which are proper to the nature of the
healthy young male. But his belligerencies were not at all militaristic.
He had seen war at short range, knew what it was, and desired it no
more. He meant to let loose his energies, as soon as might be, in that
other warfare, business; it would be after the manner of a
great-grandfather of whom a tradition persisted, and after the close
pattern of a McComas still before his eyes. A hero, if they wished; but
a hero with money in his pocket.

Meanwhile, McComas looked at his grandson and writhed. So many openings,
so many things to be done; yet what future aid had he to count on for
carrying along his line and for reaping the opportunities in his field?
A child of four, in rompers, pushing a little wheelbarrow of pebbles
along garden-paths. The years dragged. It was all too great an irony.

He sent for Albert. Albert still limped a little, but it was not to be
for long.

"You've done enough for your country," he declared with blunt emphasis.
"Now do something for me. You're almost well?"

"I think so."

"You want to pitch in?"

"I do."

"You want to amount to something?" continued McComas, pausing on the
edge of an invidious bit of characterization.

"Of course."

"You would like to come with me?"

"Yes." Surely his own father could not help him to a future.

"Well, take your choice. What do you want? Bank?"

But Albert had heard something about banks. Bank clerks, in these
close-knit days, when anybody who fell out of the lock-step was lost,
were but a sort of financial militia. Even if he were pushed along with
the friendliest zeal, it might be years before he reached the place and
the end desired. Nor had he much more fondness for growing up under the
eye of McComas than under that of his own father.

"Bank?" repeated McComas.

"No."

McComas grinned. It was the grin he used when greatly pleased.

"One of those Western concerns?"

"Yes," said Albert; "send me West."

When Raymond heard that Albe