litics, and
then, through your official associations you don't need to get off the
political ladder till you're tired. Man, it would be crazy. Think."

Steve folded his letters with precise care while McDowell pointed to the
position as he saw it. Then he laid them together in a small pile. And
all the while his eyes remained hidden from the other as though wilfully
avoiding him. Nor, as his superior ceased speaking, did he look up.

"I have thought, sir," he said in level tones. "I've had days--weeks to
think in. Yes, and nights, too." He shook his head. "A year ago the
things you're handing me now would have sounded bully. A year ago I'd
all sorts of notions, just like you're talking now. And I was crazy to
get busy. That was a year ago. I'm still crazy to get busy, but--in a
different way. I've got to get that leave, sir. I've got to make my
resignation."

McDowell had suddenly become aware of an unusual restraint in Steve's
tone. He had also realized the avoidance of his eyes. A wave of
suspicion startled him out of his comfortable equanimity.

"You're entitled to your leave, you're entitled to resign your
commission if you want to," he said with a quick return to his more
official attitude. Then, with a sudden unbending under the pressure of
curiosity and even sympathy: "I'm sorry. I'm darn sorry. You're the one
man in my command I'd just hate to lose. Still--What do you figure to
do?"

"Do?"

The sharp interrogation came with startling force. It came full of a
world of suppressed feeling. Irony, bitterness, harsh, inflexible
purpose. These things and others, which were beyond McDowell's
estimation, rang in that sharp exclamation. Steve laughed, and even to
the Superintendent there was something utterly hateful in the sound that
broke on his ears.

"Just forget you're my superior officer, McDowell," Steve cried, raising
a pair of eyes which blazed with a frigid passion of hate. "Just figure
we're two plain men, no better and no worse than most. You've a wife and
two kiddies, both growing as you'd have them. A schoolgirl and a boy,
and round whom you've built up all your notions of life. I had a wife
and one kiddie, and round them I'd built up all my notions of life.
Well, those notions of life are wrecked. They'd been building years.
Years before I had a wife. To-day they're gone completely. I haven't a
wife, and, God help me, I haven't a kiddie. And this because of one man.
I've got to find that man."