"Hum--you love it? Yes? And I am greedy to get away. I want wider
spaces----"

"California?"

"Yes. Haven't seen it for three years. I thought when the war was over I
might. But I've got to be near Washington, it seems. The heat drove me
out, and somebody told me it would be cool in these hills----"

"It is, at night. By day we're not strenuous."

"I like to be strenuous. I hate inaction."

He moved restlessly. There was a crutch by his side. Young Paine noticed
it for the first time. "I hate it."

He had a strong frame, broad shoulders and thin hips. One placed him
immediately as a man of great physical force. Yet there was the crutch.
Randy had seen other men, broad-shouldered, thin-hipped, who had come to
worse than crutches. He did not want to think of them. He had escaped
without a scratch. He did not believe that he had lacked courage, and
there was a decoration to prove that he had not. But when he thought of
those other men, he had no sense of his own valor. He had given so
little and they had given so much.

Yet it was not a thing to speak of. He struck, therefore, a note to
which he knew the other might respond.

"If you haven't been here before, you'll like the old places."