er that he was, he was fighting still, and they were
his only hope and they did not know it. No one knew it. He would not let
them know.

For that was Tom Slade.

CHAPTER IV

"LUCKY LUKE"

Next morning Tom had his breakfast in a dingy little restaurant and then
started along Terrace Avenue for the bank building, in which was the
Temple Camp office.

He still wore the shabby khaki uniform which had seen service at the
front. He was of that physique called thick-set and his face was of the
square type, denoting doggedness and endurance, and a stolid
temperament.

There had never been anything suggestive of the natty or agile about him
when he had been a scout, and army life, contrary to its reputation, had
not spruced and straightened him up at all. He was about as awkward
looking as a piece of field artillery, and he was just about as reliable
and effective. He was not built on the lines of a rifle, but rather on
the lines of a cannon, or perhaps of a tank. His mouth was long and his
lips set tight, but it twitched nervously at one end, especially when he
waited at the street crossing just before he reached the bank building,
watching the traffic with a kind of fearful, bewildered look.

Twice, thrice, he made the effort to cross and returned to his place on
the curb, interlacing his fingers distractedly. And yet this young
fellow had pushed through barbed wire entanglements and gone across No
Man's Land, without so much as a shudder in the very face of hostile
fire.

He always dreaded this street corner in the mornings and was thankful
when he was safe up in his beloved Temple Camp office. If he had been on
crutches some grateful citizen would have helped him across, and
patriotic young ladies would have paused to watch the returned hero and
some one might even have removed his hat in the soldier's presence; for
they did those things--for a while.

But such honors were only for those who were fortunate enough to have
had a leg or an arm shot off or to have been paralyzed. For the hero who
had had his nerves all shot to pieces there were no such spontaneous
tributes.

And that was the way it had always been with Tom Slade. He had always
made good, but somehow, the applause and the grateful tributes had gone
to others. Nature had not made him prepossessing and he did not know how
to talk; he was just slow and dogged and stolid, like a British tank, as
I said, and just about as homely. You could hardl