llow man with its former level eyes--and she was here to save,
not to destroy! The crouching figure on whom she had inflicted a wound
without having done the slightest good, was, after all, a big,
imaginative child in a vast night, utterly unprepared by rearing and
training, psychology or properly directed thought, to cope with this
demon-carnival into which he had been projected. And why should not the
shell's concussion have stunned him into this sad plight?

Retrospection flickering as a shadow picture on the brain has more than
once averted tragedies. In the passing of a second she now saw two
long-ago scenes: one, his desperate and victorious fight with a boy who
had kicked her puppy; the other, neighbors rushing with blankets to a
nearby pond, calling that he had swum out and saved a drowning
lad--nearly perishing in the effort! While she stared, still horrified;
while shells rent the air, and dust and smoke half blinded her, a spirit
of maternalism began to plead for this one-time schoolmate--champion of
her little dog, life-saver to a comrade! What had she done but add to
the agony of one already agonized beyond his power to escape!

A great pity filled her soul, and her body seemed to become liquefied
into a tossing sea of tears. With a sob she bent over him and, as all
ages of womanhood instinctively understand, gently drew his head against
her breast.

"Oh, Jeb! Can't you pull yourself together? Won't you try to be a man?"
she asked fiercely.

He staggered up and backed against the crater, holding his hands out to
keep her off when she would have followed. But his cheeks had turned
from white to crimson, and his eyes flashed a holy, or an unholy, fire.

"I hope to God I never get back to-night," he cried hoarsely. "I hope to
God you'll never have to look at anything as despicable as I've been!"

It was he now who occupied the place of the mighty, and she the one who
felt like cowering. Turning savagely he all but tossed the unconscious
soldier to his shoulders, struggled up the shell hole and ran toward the
dressing-stations. Scarcely knowing that her feet touched ground, she
flew behind him; sobbing, laughing, wringing her hands--lifted by the
great storm of victory which swept her soul.

But at the deserted trench he stopped, laid his burden on the little
bridge and turned back.

"Jeb, take him all the way in," she pleaded, catching at his sleeve--but
he shook off her hand, yelling like a madman: