ad ridden, he had
felt that high sense of heroic endeavor. On the success of his mission
depended other lives, the saving of nations--victory----!

And now he, with a million others, was faced by the problem of the
day's work. He wondered how the others looked at it--those gallant young
knights in khaki who had followed the gleam. Were they, too, grasping at
any job that would buy them bread and butter, pay their bills, keep them
from living on the bounty of others?

He felt that in some way the thing was all wrong. There should have been
big things for these boys to do. There seemed something insensate in a
civilization which would permit a man who wore medals of honor to sell
ribbon over a counter, or weigh out beef at a butcher's. Yet he supposed
that many of them were doing it. Indeed he knew that some of them were.
The butcher's boy, who brought the meat over every morning to King's
Crest, wore two decorations, and when Randy had stopped for breakfast
supplies, the hero of Belleau Woods had cut off sausages as calmly as he
had once bayonetted Huns.

Randy wondered what the butcher's boy was feeling under that apparently
stolid surface. Was his horizon bounded by beef and sausages, or did his
soul expand with memories of the shoulder-to-shoulder march, the
comradeship of the trenches, the laughter and songs? Did his pulses
thrill with the thought of the big things he might yet do in these days
of peace, or was he content to play safe and snip sausages?

Randy felt that he was not content. It was not that he loved war. But he
loved the visions that the war had brought him. There had seemed no
limit then to America's achievement. She had been a laggard--he thanked
God that he had not been a party to that delay. But when she had come
in, she had come in with all her might and main. And her young men had
fought and the future of the whole world had been in their hands, and
since peace had come the future of the world must still be reckoned in
the terms of their glorious youth.

And now, something within Randy began to sing and soar. He felt that
here were things to be put on paper--the questions which he flung at
himself should be written for other men to read. That was what men
needed--questions. Questions which demanded answers not only in words
but in deeds. This was a moment for men of high thoughts and high
purposes.

And he was selling cars----!

Well, some day he would write. He was writing a little now,