murmured, awkwardly.

"I said you wouldn't understand," Aiken answered. Then, to show he did
not wish to speak with me further, he spurred his mule into a trot and
kept a distance between us.

Our trail ran over soft, spongy ground and was shut in on either hand
by a wet jungle of tangled vines and creepers. They interlaced like
the strands of a hammock, choking and strangling and clinging to each
other in a great web. From the jungle we came to ill-smelling pools of
mud and water, over which hung a white mist which rose as high as our
heads. It was so heavy with moisture that our clothing dripped with
it, and we were chilled until our teeth chattered. But by five o'clock
in the morning we had escaped the coast swamps, and reached higher
ground and the village of Sagua la Grande, and the sun was drying our
clothes and taking the stiffness out of our bones.



CANAL COMPANY'S FEVER HOSPITAL,
PANAMA


The nurse brought me my diary this morning. She found it in the inside
pocket of my tunic. All of its back pages were scribbled over with
orders of the day, countersigns, and the memoranda I made after
Laguerre appointed me adjutant to the Legion. But in the first half of
it was what I see I was pleased to call my "memoirs," in which I had
written the last chapter the day Aiken and I halted at Sagua la
Grande. When I read it over I felt that I was somehow much older than