together.” He held out his hand; Haley, with a stony expression, gazed past it and saluted, while he repeated: “Yes, sor; I’ll be back to take the bags whin the train’s made up.” Whereupon he wheeled and made off with speed.

[8]

“Just the same damned obstinate way he’s always had,” chuckled the colonel to himself. Nevertheless, something ached in his throat as he frowned and winked.

“Oh, get a brace on you, you played-out old sport!” he muttered. “The game’s on the last four cards and you haven’t established your suit; you’ll have to sit back and watch the other fellows play!” But his dreary thoughts persisted. Rupert was a colonel in the regular army of the United States. He had been brevetted a brigadier-general after the Spanish War, and had commanded, not only a brigade, but a division at one critical time in the Philippines; but for reasons probably known to the little knot of politicians who “hung it up,” although incomprehensible to most Americans, Congress had failed to pass the bill giving the wearers of brevet titles the right to keep their hard-won and empty honors; wherefore[9] General Winter had declined to Colonel Winter.

[9]

He had more substantial troubles, including a wound which would probably make him limp through life and possibly retire him from service at fifty. It had given him a six months’ sick leave (which he had not wanted), and after spending a month on the Atlantic coast, he was going for the spring to the Pacific. Haley, whose own term of service had expired, had not reënlisted, but had followed him, Mrs. Haley and the baby uncomplainingly bringing up the rear. It was not fair to Haley nor to Mrs. Haley, the colonel felt. He had told Haley so; he had found a good situation for the man, and he had added the deed for a little house in the suburbs of Chicago.

If Haley wouldn’t reënlist—there never was a better soldier since he had downed a foolish young hankering for wild times and whisky—if he wouldn’t go back to the army, where he belonged, let him settle down, take up the honest carpenter’s trade that he had abandoned, be a good citizen and marry little Nora to some classmate in the high school, who might make a fortune and build her a Colonial mansion, should the Colonial still obtain in the twentieth century.

[10]The colonel had spread a grand prospect before Haley, who listened unresponsively, a dumb pain in his wide blue Irish eyes. The colonel hated it; but, somehow, he hated worse the limp 

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