ressing throngs of despairing toilers not only in New
York, but in places as remote as Chicago. Sharon Whipple now called him
a crimson rambler.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, news of the other Cowan twin trickled into Newbern through
letters from Winona Penniman, a nurse with the forces overseas. During
her months of training in New York the epistolary style of Winona had
maintained its old leisurely elegance, but early in the year of 1918 it
suffered severely under the strain of active service and became blunt to
the point of crudeness. The morale of her nice phrases had been
shattered seemingly beyond restoration.

"D--n this war!" began one letter to her mother. "We had influenza
aboard coming over and three nurses died and were buried at sea. Also,
one of our convoy foundered in a storm; I saw men clinging to the wreck
as she went down.

"Can it be that I once lived in that funny little town where they make a
fuss about dead people--flowers and a casket and a clergyman and careful
burial? With us it's something to get out of the way at once. And life
has always been this, and I never knew it, even if we did take the
papers at home. Ha, ha! Yes, I can laugh, even in the face of it. 'Life
is real, life is earnest'--how that line comes back to me with new
force!"

A succeeding letter from a base hospital somewhere in France spelled in
full certain words that had never before polluted Winona's pen. Brazenly
she abandoned the seemly reticence of dashes.

"Damn all the war!" she wrote; and again: "War is surely more hellish
than hell could be!"

"Mercy! Can the child be using such words in actual talk?", demanded
Mrs. Penniman of the judge, to whom she read the letter.

"More'n likely," declared the judge. "War makes 'em forget their home
training. Wouldn't surprise me if she went from bad to worse. It's just
a life of profligacy she's leadin'--you can't tell me."

"Nonsense!" snapped the mother.

"'And whom do you think I had a nice little visit with two days ago? He
was on his way up to the front again, and it was our Wilbur. He's been
in hot fighting three times already, but so far unscathed. But oh, how
old he looks, and so severe and grim and muddy! He says he is the
worst-scared man in the whole Army, bar none. He thought at first he
would get over his fright, but each time he goes in he hates worse and
worse to be shot at, and will positively never come to like it. He says
the o