es there must be dangerous
and trying work where the only distinction is service for the cause--our
cause of three million against five. Find a task for me, no matter how
mean, thankless, or dangerous, Lanny. The more exacting it is the more
welcome, for the better will be my chance to get right with myself."

"Come!" was Lanstron's cable in answer.

At the time he had not chosen any employment for Feller. He was thinking
only that something must be found. When he heard of the death of the
Gallands' gardener he recollected that before the passion for gambling
overtook Feller he had still another passion besides his guns. The
garden of the Feller estate had been famous in its neighborhood. Young
Lanstron had not been more fond of the society of an engine-driver than
young Feller of a gardener's. On a holiday in the capital with his
fellow cadets he would separate from them to spend hours in the
botanical gardens. Once, after his downfall began, at a riotous dinner
party he had broken into a temper with a man who had torn a rose to
pieces in order to toss the petals over the table.

"Flowers have souls!" he had cried in one of his tumultuous, abandoned
reversions to his better self which his companions found eccentric and
diverting. "That rose is the only thing in the room that is not foul
--and I am the foulest of all!"

The next minute, perhaps after another glass of champagne, he would be
winning a burst of laughter by his mimicry of a gouty old colonel
reprimanding him for his erring career.

Naturally, in the instinct of friendship, Lanstron's own account left
out the unpleasant and dwelt on the pleasant facts of Feller's career.

"His colonel did not understand him," he said. "But I knew the depths of
his fine spirit and generous heart. I knew his talent. I knew that he
was a victim of unsympathetic surroundings, of wealth, of love of
excitement, and his own talent. Where he was, something must happen. He
bubbled with energy. The routine of drill, the same old chaff of the
mess, the garrison gossip, the long hours of idleness while the busy
world throbs outside, which form a privileged life to most officers,
were stifling to him. 'Let's set things going!' he would say in the old
days, and we'd set them. Most of our demerits were for some kind of
deviltry. And how he loved the guns! I can see the sparkle of his men's
eyes at sight of him. Nobody could get out of them what he could. If he
had not been put in the