seen buried
in a deep trench, and covered with branches of palmetto. He had heard
the bugler, with tears choking him, sound "taps"; and with his own
hand he had placed the dead man's campaign hat on the mound of fresh
earth above the grave. Yet here he was still alive, and he came with
other men of his troop to speak to him; but when he reached out to
them they were gone--the real and the unreal, the dead and the
living--and even She disappeared whenever he tried to take her hand,
and sometimes the hospital steward drove her away.

"Did that young lady say when she was coming back again?" he asked the
steward.

"The young lady! What young lady?" asked the steward, wearily.

"The one who has been sitting there," he answered. He pointed with his
gaunt hand at the man in the next cot.

"Oh, that young lady. Yes, she's coming back. She's just gone below to
fetch you some hardtack."

The young volunteer in the next cot whined grievously.

"That crazy man gives me the creeps," he groaned. "He's always waking
me up, and looking at me as though he was going to eat me."

"Shut your head," said the steward. "He's a better crazy man than
you'll ever be with the little sense you've got. And he has two Mauser
holes in him. Crazy, eh? It's a damned good thing for you that there
was about four thousand of us regulars just as crazy as him, or you'd
never seen the top of the hill."

One morning there was a great commotion on deck, and all the
convalescents balanced themselves on the rail, shivering in their
pajamas, and pointed one way. The transport was moving swiftly and
smoothly through water as flat as a lake, and making a great noise
with her steam-whistle. The noise was echoed by many more
steam-whistles; and the ghosts of out-bound ships and tugs and
excursion steamers ran past her out of the mist and disappeared,
saluting joyously. All of the excursion steamers had a heavy list to
the side nearest the transport, and the ghosts on them crowded to that
rail and waved handkerchiefs and cheered. The fog lifted suddenly, and
between the iron rails the Lieutenant saw high green hills on either
side of a great harbor. Houses and trees and thousands of masts swept
past like a panorama; and beyond was a mirage of three cities, with
curling smoke-wreaths and sky-reaching buildings, and a great swinging
bridge, and a giant statue of a woman waving a welcome home.

The Lieutenant surveyed the spectacle with cynical disbelief. He