htful had not orders been
issued for complete silence. No one must know that this ship, secretly
restored from the ravages of her former crew, entertained the slightest
idea of sailing; not one of the swarm of spies in German pay, infesting
New York and its environs, must suspect this midnight-to-dawn
embarkation! So, while Jeb slept, tugs quietly warped her out, towed her
in ghostlike fashion toward the Bay and turned her free. By daylight she
was over the horizon.

And no one suspected that before daylight one of the sweating
stevedores, washed and smartly dressed, left his back-hall room in a
Hoboken boarding house, crossed to New York and entered a telephone
booth in a large hotel; thereupon calling an uptown number and telling a
keen-eyed man who listened gratefully that his wife was out of danger
and the doctor had left at two o'clock. Later that morning one of the
commercial messages which loaded the telegraph wires sped to a merchant
in Buenos Ayres asking quotations on 8,000 feet of 2-A grade mahogany
veneer; and, half an hour later, the Swedish Legation there was telling
Berlin that, upon this date, at 2 A. M., a steamer of 8,000 tons burden
had cleared New York, destination France.

When the bugles sounded reveille Jeb fell out with the others. This
taste of the military was decidedly acceptable to him. He regretted that
his unit did not fall in for mess, as the Canadian veterans, for
instance. He regretted keenly his ignorance of army matters, the manual,
even, and the habit that came with constant discipline of keeping
oneself smart, straight, clear-eyed and ever courteous--as a good
soldier is. There were several pretty nurses aboard--several who were
not!--and for once his classic features found worthy rivals in the less
handsome, though more perfectly conditioned, regulars.

Jeb had not realized as yet that he was stepping into an age where
Service counts above all other human assets; where the millionaire who
sits smugly in his club is contemptible beside the twenty-five dollar a
week man who puts his shoulder to the yoke. He had not seen this as yet,
nor could he have believed that henceforth, as never before, the real
men and real women of the world would be graded by the stamp of
_sterling service_, as distinguished from, and higher than, sterling
dollars. This great lesson he had yet to learn, as millions are learning
and will continue to learn.

There sometimes comes in the life of men an affin