pick my way through the clutter of men lying, some still as
death, some writhing and gurgling horrid sounds. I had got about eight
feet when across the hideous noises broke a laugh like a pleased kid. I
whirled. He'd lifted his big shoulders up from the straw and was
laughing after me from under those thick black lashes; his eyes were
brilliant. He stretched out his arms to me.

"'American, sir,' he said in a strong voice. And fell back dead."

I heard the clock tick and tick. And tick. Minutes went by. Then the
boy got up in the throbbing silence and walked to the fire and stood,
his back to me, looking down at the embers. His voice came over his
square young shoulders, difficult but determined, as of a man who must
say a thing which has dogged him to be said.

"God arranged it, Uncle Bill. I know that well enough. God forgave him
enough to send him me and a happy day to go out on. So don't you
believe--that things are all right with him now?"

It was hard to speak, but I had to--I had a message. "John," I said,
"we two know the splendor of his going, and that other things count as
nothing beside that redemption. Do you suppose a great God is more
narrow-minded than we?"

And my boy turned, and came and sat on the broad side of the chair, and
put his arm around my shoulder and his young head against mine. His
cheek was hot and wet on my thin hair.

"American, sir," whispered my dear boy, softly.

KATHERINE MAYO

John G.

It was nine o'clock of a wild night in December. For forty-eight hours
it had been raining, raining, raining, after a heavy fall of snow.
Still the torrents descended, lashed by a screaming wind, and the song
of rushing water mingled with the cry of the gale. Each steep street of
the hill-town of Greensburg lay inches deep under a tearing flood. The
cold was as great as cold may be while rain is falling. A night to give
thanks for shelter overhead, and to hug the hearth with gratitude.

First Sergeant Price, at his desk in the Barracks office, was honorably
grinding law. Most honorably, because, when he had gone to take the
book from its shelf in the day-room, "Barrack-Room Ballads"[68-1] had
smiled down upon him with a heart-aching echo of the soft, familiar
East; so that of a sudden he had fairly smelt the sweet, strange,
heathen smell of the temples in Tien Tsin--had seen the flash of a
parrot's wing in the bolo-toothed Philippine jungle. And the sight and
the smell, on a night l