ly room in the house with a
private bath, she made herself comfortable for the time being. She
needed sleep before she could engage in the adventure she was planning.
A hotel or boarding house is a good place in which to pick up
information and Josie wanted to pick up a little information before she
proceeded.

The proprietor of the hotel was a sieve for gossip and in less than
twelve hours Josie had not only had a good night's rest but she had
learned several things she considered of importance. The host was a man
of generous proportions and a loud emphatic utterance, with which he
gave voice to a perpetual grievance he had concerning the high cost of
food and the low price of board.

"Nothing in it! Nothing in it! I have been keeping this here hotel for
thirty years and if it wasn't for the war I'd be in the poor house this
minute. The war did whoop things up for me a bit. A camp within six
miles meant I kept my house full to running over with wives and mothers
and what-not."

"Did it leave off, this prosperity, when the war was over," asked
Josie.

"Well, the hospital still hands me a bit of business."

"You mean the sanitarium?"

The hotel man snorted in disgust.

"Not on your life! That old skinflint, Dr. Harper, who is running the
sanitarium, has a place he calls his Guest House, and when folks come
to see their nutty relations he sees to it that they stop there. There
is never a nickel that gets by that old gouger. I mean Uncle Sam's
hospital that is yonder just over the hill. It's a place for nuts, too,
the men that got done up during the war. Poor fellows! They make me
feel right bad, but I am glad they have built the hospital near me,
s'long as they have to have one."

"That is sad--as sad as anything in the world," sighed Josie. "Do the
inmates of that hospital have to be confined?"

"Not all of them. Some of them have merely lost memory. There was a
fellow in here yesterday. He is a real gentleman, but somehow in the
shuffle of war he got dropped on the floor. He can't remember his name
and nobody can trace his connections in the army. He was a prisoner in
Germany for a long time--was ill there and had typhoid fever on top of
shell shock and his captors didn't take the trouble to keep his
identification tag and here the poor fellow is walking around in a kind
of daze. He seems to be healthy and sane but just can't remember who he
is or where he came from. He has a kind of job at the hospital beca