re
they seemed all to be engaged in staring with astonishment at him.
They had become spectators. Turning to the front again he saw, under
the lifted smoke, a deserted ground.

He looked bewildered for a moment. Then there appeared upon the glazed
vacancy of his eyes a diamond point of intelligence. "Oh," he said,
comprehending.

He returned to his comrades and threw himself upon the ground. He
sprawled like a man who had been thrashed. His flesh seemed strangely
on fire, and the sounds of the battle continued in his ears. He groped
blindly for his canteen.

The lieutenant was crowing. He seemed drunk with fighting. He called
out to the youth: "By heavens, if I had ten thousand wild cats like
you I could tear th' stomach outa this war in less'n a week!" He puffed
out his chest with large dignity as he said it.

Some of the men muttered and looked at the youth in awestruck ways. It
was plain that as he had gone on loading and firing and cursing without
proper intermission, they had found time to regard him. And they now
looked upon him as a war devil.

The friend came staggering to him. There was some fright and dismay in
his voice. "Are yeh all right, Fleming? Do yeh feel all right? There
ain't nothin' th' matter with yeh, Henry, is there?"

"No," said the youth with difficulty. His throat seemed full of knobs
and burrs.

These incidents made the youth ponder. It was revealed to him that he
had been a barbarian, a beast. He had fought like a pagan who defends
his religion. Regarding it, he saw that it was fine, wild, and, in
some ways, easy. He had been a tremendous figure, no doubt. By this
struggle he had overcome obstacles which he had admitted to be
mountains. They had fallen like paper peaks, and he was now what he
called a hero. And he had not been aware of the process. He had
slept, and, awakening, found himself a knight.

He lay and basked in the occasional stares of his comrades. Their
faces were varied in degrees of blackness from the burned powder. Some
were utterly smudged. They were reeking with perspiration, and their
breaths came hard and wheezing. And from these soiled expanses they
peered at him.

"Hot work! Hot work!" cried the lieutenant deliriously. He walked up
and down, restless and eager. Sometimes his voice could be heard in a
wild, incomprehensible laugh.

When he had a particularly profound thought upon the science of war he
always unconsciously addr