, little to suggest
the ageing process that commonly went on among the soldiers in the Great
War. Grant had twice stopped an enemy bullet, but his fine figure and
sunburned health now gave no evidence of those experiences. Linder
counted himself lucky to carry only an empty sleeve.

They had fallen in with each other in France, and the friendship planted
in the foothills of the range country had grown, through the strange
prunings and graftings of war, into a tree of very solid timber. Linder
might have told you of the time his captain found him with his arm
crushed under a wrecked piece of artillery, and Grant could have
recounted a story of being dragged unconscious out of No Man's Land, but
for either to dwell upon these matters only aroused the resentment of
the other, and frequently led to exchanges between captain and sergeant
totally incompatible with military discipline. They were content to pay
tribute to each other, but each to leave his own honors unheralded.

"First thing is a place to eat," Grant remarked, when they had been
dismissed. Words to similar effect had, indeed, been his first remark
upon every suitable opportunity for three months. An appetite which
has been four years in the making is not to be satisfied overnight, and
Grant, being better fortified financially against the stress of a good
meal, sought to be always first to suggest it. Linder accepted the
situation with the complacence of a man who has been four years on army
pay.

When they had eaten they took a walk through the old town--Grant's old
town. It looked as though he had stepped out of it yesterday; it was
hard to realize that ages lay between. There are experiences which soak
in slowly, like water into a log. The new element surrounds the body,
but it may be months before it penetrates to the heart. Grant had some
sense of that fact as he walked the old familiar streets, apparently
unchanged by all these cataclysmic days.... In time he would come to
understand. There was the name plate of Barrett, Jones, Barrett, Deacon
& Barrett. There had not even been an addition to the firm. Here was
the old Grant office, now used for some administration purpose. That, at
least, was a move in the right direction.

They wandered along aimlessly while the sunset of an early summer
evening marshalled its glories overhead. On a side street children
played in the roadway; on a vacant spot a game of ball was in progress.
Women sat on their veranda