it's nothing. Where you came from it's nothing--a sleeping
sickness."

Claude laughed. "I don't know that I agree with you, but I like
to hear you talk."

"Well; in that part of France that's all shot to pieces, you'll
find more life going on in the cellars than in your home town,
wherever that is. I'd rather be a stevedore in the London docks
than a banker-king in one of your prairie States. In London, if
you're lucky enough to have a shilling, you can get something for
it."

"Yes, things are pretty tame at home," the other admitted.

"Tame? My God, it's death in life! What's left of men if you take
all the fire out of them? They're afraid of everything. I know
them; Sunday-school sneaks, prowling around those little towns
after dark!" Victor abruptly dismissed the subject. "By the way,
you're pals with the doctor, aren't you? I'm needing some
medicine that is somewhere in my lost trunk. Would you mind
asking him if he can put up this prescription? I don't want to go
to him myself. All these medicos blab, and he might report me.
I've been lucky dodging medical inspections. You see, I don't
want to get held up anywhere. Tell him it's not for you, of
course."

When Claude presented the piece of blue paper to Doctor Trueman,
he smiled contemptuously. "I see; this has been filled by a
London chemist. No, we have nothing of this sort." He handed it
back. "Those things are only palliatives. If your friend wants
that, he needs treatment,--and he knows where he can get it."

Claude returned the slip of paper to Victor as they left the
dining-room after supper, telling him he hadn't been able to get
any.

"Sorry," said Victor, flushing haughtily. "Thank you so much!"

VIII

Tod Fanning held out better than many of the stronger men; his
vitality surprised the doctor. The death list was steadily
growing; and the worst of it was that patients died who were not
very sick. Vigorous, clean-blooded young fellows of nineteen and
twenty turned over and died because they had lost their courage,
because other people were dying,--because death was in the air.
The corridors of the vessel had the smell of death about them.
Doctor Trueman said it was always so in an epidemic; patients
died who, had they been isolated cases, would have recovered.

"Do you know, Wheeler," the doctor remarked one day when they
came up from the hospital together to get a breath of air, "I
sometimes wonder whether all these inoculations they've