need you?"

"Need me? What!" he exclaimed, with perceptible change of tone, though
it was incredulous.

"Sure," interposed Blair.

"Red--listen," continued Lane, speaking low and with difficulty.
"Blair and I have been through the--the whole show together.... And
we've been in the hospitals with you for months.... We've all
got--sort of to rely on each other.... Let's stick it out to the end.
I guess--you know--we may not have a long time...."

Lane's voice trailed off. Then the stony face of the listener changed
for a fleeting second.

"Boys, I'll go over with you," he said.

And then the maimed Blair, awkward with his crutch and bag, insisted
on helping Lane get Red aboard the train. Red could just about walk.
Sombrely they clambered up the steps into the Pullman.

Middleville was a prosperous and thriving inland town of twenty
thousand inhabitants, identical with many towns of about the same size
in the middle and eastern United States.

Lane had been born there and had lived there all his life, seldom
having been away up to the advent of the war. So that the memories of
home and town and place, which he carried away from America with him,
had never had any chance, up to the time of his departure, to change