uling or some--to her--equally
incomprehensible thing. He emerged from it to exclaim tensely: "Oh I get
so sick of the spirit of the army!"

Instinctively Katie looked around. He saw it, and laughed.

"There you go! We've made a perfect fetich of loyalty. It's a different
sort of loyalty those forestry fellows have--a more live, more
constructive loyalty. The loyalty that comes, not through form, but
through devotion to the work--a common interest in a common cause. Ours
is built on dead things. Custom, and the caste--I know no other
word--just the bull-headed, asinine, undemocratic caste that custom has
built up."

"And yet--there must be discipline," Katie murmured: it seemed dreadful
Wayne should be tearing down their house in that rude fashion, house in
which they had dwelt so long, and so comfortably.

"Discipline is one thing. Bullying's another. I've never been satisfied
discipline couldn't be enforced without snobbery. To-day Solesby--one
year out of West Point!--walked through a shop I was in. He passed men
working at their machines--skilled mechanics, many of them men of
intelligence, ideas, character--as though he were passing so much cattle.
I wanted to take him by the neck and throw him out!"

"Oh well," protested Katie, "one year out of the Point! He's yet to learn
men are not cattle."

"Well, Leonard never learned it. His back gets some black looks, let me
tell you."

"Wayne dear," she laughed, "I'm afraid you're not talking like an officer
and a gentleman."

"I get tired talking like an officer and a gentleman. Sometimes I feel
like talking like a man."

"But couldn't you be court-martialed for doing that?" she laughed.

"I think Leonard thinks I should be."

"Why--why, Wayne?"

"Because I talk to the men. There's a young mechanic who has been
detailed to me, and he and I get on famously. All too famously, I take it
Leonard thinks. He came in to-day when this young Ferguson was telling me
some things about his union. He treated Ferguson like a dog and me like a
suspicious character."

"Dear me, Wayne," she murmured, "don't get in trouble."

"Trouble!" he scoffed. "Well if I can get in trouble for talking with an
intelligent man I'm working with about the things that man knows--then
let me get in trouble! I'd rather talk to Ferguson than Solesby--we've
more in common. Oh I'll get in no trouble," he added grimly. "Leonard
knows it wouldn't sound well to say it. But he feels it, just the s