g him back? Part of the cargo
of a ship ... one day ... "a nigger for Central Africa...."

"Where's his unit?"

"Who knows! One nigger and his bundle ... for Central Africa!"

The ward has put Mr. Wicks to Coventry because he has been abusive and
violent-tempered for three days.

He lies flat in his bed and frowns; no more jokes over the lemonade, no
wilfulness over the thermometer.

It is in these days that Mr. Wicks faces the truth.

I lingered by his bed last night, after I had put his tea-tray on his
table, and looked down at him; he pretended to be inanimate, his open
eyes fixed upon the white rail of the bed. His bedclothes were stretched
about him as though he had not moved since his bed was made, hours
before.

His worldly pleasures were beside him--his reading-lamp, his Christmas
box of cigars, his _Star_--but his eyes, disregarding them, were upon
that sober vision that hung around the bedrail.

He began a bitter conversation:

"Nurse, I'm only a ranker, but I had a bit saved. I went to a private
doctor and paid for myself. And I went to a specialist, and he told me I
should never get this. I paid for it myself out of what I had saved."

We might have been alone in the world, he and I. Far down at the other
end of the room the men sat crouched about the fire, their trays before
them on chairs. The sheet of window behind Mr. Wicks's head was flecked
with the morsels of snow which, hunted by the gale, obtained a second's
refuge before oblivion.

"I'd sooner be dead than lying here; I would, reely." You hear that
often in the world. "I'd sooner be dead than----" But Mr. Wicks meant
it; he would sooner be dead than lying there. And death is a horror, an
end. Yet he says lying there is worse.

"You see, I paid for a specialist myself, and he told me I should never
be like this."

There was nothing to be said.... One must have one's tea. I went down
the ward to the bunk, and we cut the pink iced cake left over from
Christmas....

I did not mean to forget him, but I forgot him. From birth to death we
are alone....

But one of the Sisters remembered him.

"Mr. Wicks is still in the dumps," she remarked.

"What is really the matter with him, Sister?"

"Locomotor ataxy." And she added as she drank her tea, "It's his own
fault."

"Oh, hush, hush!" my heart cried soundlessly to her, "You can't judge
the bitterness of this, nun, from your convent...!"

Alas, Mr. Wicks!... No wonder you saved