ld make it go, for your sake--"

"For my sake, boy? Why, I have all of it I care for. Not for my sake.
But what else can we do but stick it?"

"I suppose so--but for Heaven's sake give me something worth a man's
doing. If I could tackle a job such as you and"--the boy winced--"you
and mother took on I believe I'd try it. But that office! Any fool could
sit in my place and carry on. It is like the job they used to give to
the crocks or the slackers at the base to do. Give me a man's job."

The father's keen blue eyes looked his son over.

"A man's job?" he said, with a grim smile, realising as his son did not
how much of a man's job it was. "Suppose you learn this one as I did?"

"What do you mean, Dad, exactly? How did you begin?"

"I? At the tail of the saw."

"All right, I'm game."

"Boy, you are right--I believe in my soul you are right. You did a man's
job 'out there' and you have it in you to do a man's job again."

The son shrugged his shoulders. Next morning at seven they were down at
the planing mill where men were doing men's work. He was at a man's job,
at the tail of a saw, and drawing a man's pay, rubbing shoulders with
men on equal terms, as he had in the trenches. And for the first time
since Armistice Day, if not happy or satisfied, he was content to carry
on.

CHAPTER IV

ANNETTE

Sam Wigglesworth had finished with school, which is not quite the same
as saying that he had finished his education. A number of causes had
combined to bring this event to pass. First, Sam was beyond the age
of compulsory attendance at the Public School, the School Register
recording him as sixteen years old. Then, Sam's educational career had
been anything but brilliant. Indeed, it might fairly be described as
dull. All his life he had been behind his class, the biggest boy in his
class, which fact might have been to Sam a constant cause of humiliation
had he not held as of the slightest moment merely academic achievements.
One unpleasant effect which this fact had upon Sam's moral quality was
that it tended to make him a bully. He was physically the superior of
all in his class, and this superiority he exerted for what he deemed the
discipline of younger and weaker boys, who excelled him in intellectual
attainment.

Furthermore, Sam, while quite ready to enforce the code of discipline
which he considered suitable to the smaller and weaker boys in his
class, resented and resisted the attempts of constitut