Rumors had drifted to him that the taste for liquor acquired in
camp as an antidote for sickness had grown upon his comrade and
finally overcome him. From Jeff he learned that after his father's
death the widow had sold her mortgaged place and moved to the
Pacific Coast. She had invested the few hundreds left her in some
river-bottom lots at Verden and had later discovered that an
unscrupulous real estate dealer had unloaded upon her worthless
property. The patched and threadbare clothes of the boy told him
that from a worldly point of view the affairs of the Farnums were
at ebb tide.

"Did . . . did you know father very well?" Jeff asked tremulously.

Chunn looked down at the thin dark face of the boy walking beside
him and was moved to lay a hand on his shoulder. He understood the
ache in that little heart to hear about the father who was a hero
to him. Jeff was of no importance in the alien world about him.
The Captain guessed from the little scene he had witnessed that
the lad trod a friendless, stormy path. He divined, too, that the
hungry soul was fed from within by dreams and memories.

So Lucius Chunn talked. He told about the slender, soldierly
officer in gray who had given himself so freely to serve his men,
of the time he had caught pneumonia by lending his blanket to a
sick boy, of the day he had led the charge at Battle Creek and
received the wound which pained him so greatly to the hour of his
death. And Jeff drank his words in like a charmed thing. He
visualized it all, the bitter nights in camp, the long wet
marches, the trumpet call to battle. It was this last that his
imagination seized upon most eagerly. He saw the silent massing of