warrior, he is coming out."

The door of his state room creaked and swung open slowly. As it swung
back within loomed the figure that attracts attention everywhere. The
colonel stepped out slowly, his shoulders thrown back and his bearing
soldierly. He stretched out two fingers to one of the party.

"Ah, old comrade," he said, "shake. The newspaper boys are my friends,"
he added, as he proceeded toward the door of the car. "I'm glad to see
them."

"You had a pretty rough time last night, colonel," suggested somebody.

"We did have a middling lively time, didn't we?" said the colonel with
a broad grin.

"Pretty plucky of you," said another man. "Everybody agrees to that."

"Fiddlesticks," and the colonel stepped out on the platform and down
the steps.

He had indignantly refused a stretcher and even balked at an ambulance,
but finally agreed that this was the best means of conveyance to the
hospital.

He walked past a silent crowd, a crowd that wanted to cheer, but did
not dare, but stood, without a smile as he went by. To them all he
waved a hand. Just as he was leaving the steps a flashlight flared
forth, the sharp report of the powder startling everybody.

[Illustration: Capt. A. O. Girard.]

"Ah, shot again," said the colonel, without a tremor.

Before climbing into the ambulance he turned to the newspaper men who
had come out to see him off.

"I want to see you newspaper men at the hospital at 3 o'clock. I want
all the old guard there." Then he started up the steps of the
automobile conveyance with a firm step and tried to seat himself firmly
on the cushion. But he had counted on more strength than he possessed.
With a smothered exclamation he sank back among them, his head dropping
and his figure one of pathetic helplessness.

At 3 o'clock he welcomed the newspaper men sitting up in bed with his
massive chest hidden beneath an undershirt.

"I came away in too big a hurry to get my pajamas," he explained,
apologetically.

"Here they are, bless their hearts. They never desert me," the colonel
cried, as the visitors were ushered in.

His face had lost the gray of the early morning and resumed its normal
tint. He never looked better and certainly never looked larger. He
filled the narrow hospital cot completely, from side to side, and from
end to end.

Two beautiful rooms had been secured for him at Mercy Hospital, one of
the biggest and finest institutions in the west. The four windows of
the