the belief--unassailable, absolute--that he could not by any human means
turn from the direction his life was pointing. He felt this profoundly.
His mind kicked and held back against it, but a great something was
calmly impelling him on. He hated this inexorable force; he cursed it;
for he did not realize that it was his own soul!

The editor had followed him out, having duties elsewhere in the
building, so the Colonel sat alone listening to their retreating steps.
His fine head was erect, his hands were clasped and his arms thrust out
before him on the table. Jeb's confession was burning into his brain as
he reviewed every chapter of the boy's behavior since early April. Each
of Jeb's procrastinations and evasions now stood out clearly, connoting
but one thing, predicated on but one thing! Slowly the old gentleman's
mustache began to move in a curious way; by degrees his face became
convulsed; then, letting his head fall between the outstretched arms, he
yielded to a great sob:

"My God--a coward!"

CHAPTER VII

Some time before daylight Jeb fell asleep. In the work and hustle of
getting aboard and stowing supplies for his unit, of dodging a company
of Canadians looking to their own embarkation, and of steering his
course through half an army of sweating stevedores who were loading vast
quantities of freight for the Allied army, he had not thought of
himself. But he had felt the elation which comes to all who are
cohesively striving for a single purpose that lies beyond dangerous, and
as yet insurmountable, ground. He had responded to the _camaraderie_ of
these Canadian chaps, and it had been good. Now he slept.

The steamer that took his unit to France, and these few furloughed boys
from Canada back to their regiment, was not large as steamers go, but it
looked monstrous to Jeb. Had he been familiar with trans-Atlantic travel
he would have missed the library, main saloon, smoking and
writing-rooms, as these spaces which formerly belonged to the pleasure
traveler were now converted into bunks. Bunks were everywhere--empty
bunks for the most part on this trip, but ready for the great movement
later on. Perhaps the next time over she might bring the American boys!

When these lads from Canada, the doctors and the nurses (and the
stretcher bearers, of which Jeb was one, although he had not yet
discovered it) realized their transport was an old reconverted German
tub, they would have cheered an irony so delig