was safe. He lay down with a grateful heart, and his thoughts, like the
thoughts of every man in that tropical forest, took flight for home.
Life was getting very simple now for him--death, too, and duty. Already
he was beginning to wonder at his old self and, with a shock, it came to
him that there were but three women in the world to him--Phyllis and his
mother--and Judith. He thought of the night of the parting, and it
flashed for the first time upon him that Judith might have taken the
shame that he felt reddening his face as shame for her, and not for
himself: and a pain shot through him so keen that he groaned aloud.

Above him was a clear sky, a quarter moon, an enveloping mist of stars,
and the very peace of heaven. But there was little sleep--and that
battle-haunted--for any: and for him none at all.

* * * * *

And none at all during that night of agony for Judith, nor Phyllis, nor
the mother at Canewood, though there was a reaction of joy, next
morning, when the name of neither Crittenden was among the wounded or
the dead.

Nothing had been heard, so far, of the elder brother but, as they sat in
the porch, a negro boy brought the town paper, and Mrs. Crittenden found
a paragraph about a soldier springing into the sea in full uniform at
Siboney to rescue a drowning comrade, who had fallen into the surf while
trying to land, and had been sunk to the bottom by his arms and
ammunition. And the rescuer's name was Crittenden. The writer went on to
tell who he was, and how he had given up his commission to a younger
brother and had gone as a private in the regular army--how he had been
offered another after he reached Cuba, and had declined that,