e had said. I was, you
know, that year, the Citizen's Anti-Graft leader in the 50th Ward.... I
am, still, if I live; and if I ever can get anything into my head except
the stupendous din of this war and the cataclysmic problems depending upon
its outcome.... Well, it was odd to remember that petty political conflict
as I stood there in the trenches under the gigantic shadow of world-wide
disaster--to find myself there, talking with this sallow, wiry, shifty
ward leader--this corrupt little local tyrant whom I had opposed in the
50th Ward--this ex-lightweight bruiser, ex-gunman--this dirty little
political procurer who had been and was everything brutal, stealthy, and
corrupt.

I looked at him curiously; turned and glanced along the line where,
presently, I recognized his two familiars, Heinie Baum and Pick-em-up Joe
Brady with whom he had started off to "Parus" on a month's summer junket,
and with whom he had stumbled so ludicrously into the riff-raff ranks of
the 3rd Foreign Legion. Doubtless the 1st and 2nd Legions couldn't stand
him and his two friends, although in one company there were many Americans
serving.

Thinking of these things, the thunder of the cannonade shaking sand from
the parapet, I became conscious that the rat eyes of Duck Werner were
furtively watching me.

"You can do me dirt, now, can't you, Doc?" he said with a leer.

"How do you mean?"

"Aw, as if I had to tell you. I got some sense left."

Suddenly his sallow visage under the iron helmet became distorted with
helpless fury; he fairly snarled; his thin lips writhed as he spat out the
suspicion which had seized him:

"By God, Doc, if you do that!--if you leave me here caged up an' go home
an' raise hell in the 50th--with me an' Joe here----"

After a breathless pause: "Well," said I, "what will you do about
it?"--for he was looking murder at me.

Neither of us spoke again for a few moments; an officer, smoking a
cigarette, came up between Heinie and Pick-em-up Joe, adjusted a periscope
and set his eye to it. Through the sky above us the shells raced as though
hundreds of shaky express trains were rushing overhead on rickety aerial
tracks, deafening the world with their outrageous clatter.

"Listen, Doc----"

I looked up into his altered face--a sallow, earnest face, fiercely
intent. Every atom of the man's intelligence was alert, concentrated on
me, on my expression, on my slightest movement.

"Doc," he said, "let's talk business.