tless have ordered him from the office.
But this was the son of his old friend; the boy he had watched with
pride, lo! these twenty-six years. One cannot in the batting of an eye
shake off an affection so deeply grounded!

"Well, sir, I know it, too," he suddenly exclaimed. "I ask you what we
are going to do!"

"I--I wish I knew," Jeb answered desperately. "I--I want to do
something----"

"You've _got_ to do something," the interruption came with
uncompromising sternness.

The door opened and Mr. Strong entered.

"Hullo," he cried, with a brevity characteristic of him when hurried.
"Would have been here sooner, but that plagued unit had to be got
fixed."

"What unit are you talking about, Amos?" the Colonel asked, glad and
sorry for the interruption.

The editor seated himself and began to run a thin steel paper knife
through one after another of several unopened letters.

"Barrow's," he answered, without turning around. "Barrow's hospital
unit--leaves some time tonight; and Wade, the man listed to go from
here, dropped a packing box on his foot. Barrow 'phoned me last night,
and I've been looking for a suitable man all morning."

Nearly everyone in Hillsdale had heard that the great Barrow was heading
a hospital unit, and the editor's nearest friends knew that he had been
honored with permission to select one man from his own town. Now this
man had come to grief! The Colonel looked across at Jeb. He saw at once
a miraculous opportunity, and whispered:

"Helping about a hospital is a fine work, Jeb. Of course, it isn't like
being with the Colors, but it means service--a very noble service!"

Jeb's mind had sprung farther ahead than the nobility of service. It saw
a place of comparative safety, far from the range of shells; there would
be no charging over parapets, no bullets would come ploughing through
his stomach, no shrapnel would tear shreds from his face! He thought
much of that face. He could actually be in France and come home a hero!
Besides all these considerations, he would escape the draft!

The Colonel, watching closely, read each argument, each emotion. For a
moment his own fearless, honest eyes drew to shiny points and his lips,
had he not controlled them, would have curled in disgust. But he could
not quite forget that Jeb was the son of his old friend; aye, and his
own friend. As there had been two personalities in Jeb, tugging for and
against enlistment, so were there two beings in the Co