for a principle, and had kept on fighting
even when the substance of the thing he fought for was gone and there
remained but the empty husks. It recalled those last few hopeless months
when the forlorn hope had become indeed a lost cause; when the forty
cents he now carried in his pocket would have seemed a fortune; when the
sorry house where he lodged now would have seemed a palace; when,
without prospect or hope of reward or victory, he had piled risk upon
risk, had piled sacrifice upon sacrifice, and through it all had borne
it all without whimper or complaint--fighting the good fight like a
soldier, keeping the faith like a gentleman. It was the Smoke of Battle!

The major had his inspiration now, right enough. He knew just what he
would write; knew just how he would write it. He laid down the pistol
and the shells and squared off and straightway began writing. For two
hours nearly he wrote away steadily, rarely changing or erasing a word,
stopping only to repoint the lead of his pencil. Methodically as a
machine he covered sheet after sheet with his fine old-fashioned script.
Never for one instant did he hesitate or falter.

Just before one o'clock he finished. The completed manuscript, each page
of the twenty-odd pages properly numbered, lay in a neat pile before
him. He scooped up the pistol shells and stored them in an inner breast
pocket of his coat; then he opened a drawer, slipped the emptied
revolver well back under a riffle of papers and clippings and closed the
drawer and locked it. His notes he tore into squares, and those squares
into smaller squares--and so on until the fragments would tear no finer,
but fluttered out between his fingers in a small white shower like stage
snow.

He shoved his completed narrative back under the roll-top of Devore's
desk, where the city editor would see it the very first thing when he
came to work; and as he straightened up with a little grunt of
satisfaction and stretched his arms out the last of his fine-linen
shirts, with a rending sound, ripped down the plaited front, from
collarband almost to waistline.

He eyed the ruined bosom with a regretful stare, plucking at the gaping
tear with his graphite-dusted fingers and shaking his head mournfully.
Yet as he stepped out into the street, bound for his lodgings, he jarred
his heels down upon the sidewalk with the brisk, snapping gait of a man
who has tackled a hard job and has done it well, and is satisfied with
the wa