my flesh," there was a break in the boy's voice which robbed the words
of grandiloquence.

"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.