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didn't see anything to be ashamed of in the Croix-and Corey wore it where a fellow couldn't help seeing. There was, Burke said, a queer kind of apology in it. No, there had been nothing like brag in Corey's answer. There had been none of that in anything he had done. And he had been, according to Burke, the best surgeon of them all, the best man at his work. But of course he had come to disaster in the end. A man can't go on ignoring danger like that.

They were stationed at Jubécourt, outside Verdun, and for months the struggle had raged, attack and counterattack, for the possession of Hill 304. Corey had gone up to the front poste de secour at Esnes, where in an underground shelter fitted up in what had been the basement of an ancient château, reduced now to ruins by the German shells, he was giving first aid to the wounded brought in from the trenches.

Word had come into the poste one night that an officer, lying in a trench dugout, was too far gone to move. And Corey had volunteered to go, alone, on foot, along the zigzag communication trench that led to the dugout, under the incessant shelling, and see what he could do. And early that morning, about three o'clock, they had been carried in, Corey and his officer-the only two who had come out of that trench alive.

From the officer they had the story of what Corey had done; not many words, to be sure, and little embellishment, but such accounts need no flowers, no figures of speech. The facts are enough, told in gasps, as this one was, hurriedly, while yet there was strength, as one pays a debt, all at once, for fear he may never again have gold to pay.

A trench torpedo had found its mark. And Corey, bending above him, had deliberately braced himself, holding his arms out, and had received in his stead the exploding pieces of shell. He raised himself on his elbow to look at Corey, unconscious, on the next stretcher. He wanted it understood. He sent for an orderly and dictated a message which he managed to sign, and despatched it posthaste to Staff Headquarters. And then he resigned himself to the hands of those about him.

The news had come in to Jubécourt

by telephone, and just before dawn Burke had gone up to see what could be done. When he reached the poste Corey had regained consciousness, and was waiting for him. He had sent word ahead that he was coming. And Corey was wounded, Burke said, in a way no other man could have withstood. And the "queer" thing now was that he knew it, and when Burke leaned over him there was a gleam in his eyes as if he were keeping it there by his own will

power.

He seemed relieved then, and began at once he had saved a surprising amount of strength to speak. He knew Burke planned to go to New York, and he wanted him to deliver some papers. They were in his bag, at Jubécourt; he told him where he should find the key, and then he asked Burke to write down Mr. Ewing's name and address.

It was while Burke was crossing the dim, lamp-lighted room in search of a pencil or pen that some one had stopped him to say that the General was coming at eleven to confer upon Corey the Medaille Militaire. It had given Burke a distinct kind of shock. Could it be, he wondered, that that was what Corey had saved himself for? For Corey knew, as well as they, that the Medaille Militaire was the one decoration never conferred upon dead men. He had gone on and borrowed the pen, and on the way back had asked if he might be allowed to tell Corey. It might, he said, do him some good. That news had turned the balance for more than one man.

But when, a few moments later, Burke, receiving permission, had told Corey his news, he had been for a moment afraid that the balance had turned

and in the wrong way. Corey had seemed hardly to comprehend, and then a sudden unaccountable change had come over his face.

"The Medaille!" he gasped. "What time did you say?"

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'Eleven," Burke told him-"three hours from now."

He seemed then to be considering something deep within himself, so that Burke hardly heard when he said, "That's time enough." And Burke, thinking that he had been measuring his strength against the time, hastened a

little awkwardly to reassure him. But Corey, ignoring his assurance, had seemed to arrive at some secret conclusion.

"Did you put down the name?" he asked.

Burke had forgotten the name, and Corey told him again, patiently, spelling out the address. He watched while Burke wrote.

"The papers all go to him." He was silent a moment. Then: "Listen," he said. "Will you give him this message for me?"

Burke promised, whatever he wished, word for word.

"Tell him," he said, "that it breaks a man's luck to know what he wants.' "Yes," said Burke. "Is there anything else?"

The strength had drained out of Corey's voice with the last words. Again he waited while he seemed to decide. And when he spoke, at last, a strange gentleness had come into his tone, so that Burke was not surprised to hear that the message was meant now for a woman.

"Tell him," said Corey, "there's no use letting her know about the Medaille Militaire.'

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And although Burke had divined some obscure meaning in Corey's words, he was yet not quite certain that he had heard aright. "You mean that she's not to know?"

Corey nodded his head, yes, and Burke saw that he was no longer able to speak. Turning, he motioned an orderly to his side, and whispered that he was afraid Corey would never last until eleven.

The orderly sped away, and a moment later the French doctor in charge stood beside Corey's stretcher, opening his hypodermic case.

And then, Burke said, he had done what seemed to him the "queerest" thing of all. He had made a signal for

Burke to come nearer, and when he had leaned down, he said, "Remember to tell him I didn't take that." He was looking at the hypodermic the doctor held in his hand.

"But the Medaille-" began Burke, and was stopped by the strangeness of Corey's expression. He had, he said, smiled a secret mysterious smile, and closed his eyes with a curious look of

content.

And even the French doctor had seen, by something in his faint gesture of refusal, that Corey would never submit to his restorative. He put the case down on a box, with a nod to the orderly, in case Corey should change his mind.

And Burke had stayed by until the Division General, just half an hour too late, had arrived at exactly eleven o'clock. Corey had not changed his mind. . . .

That, then, was the end of the story.

So much affected was I at the nature of poor Corey's death that I almost forgot Mr. Ewing, sitting there across from me in our comfortable smoking-car, and that he might, in all decency, expect some comment from me. Indeed, I think I should have forgotten altogether if I had not felt after a little a relaxation of his long-continued gaze, and I knew he was going to speak.

"Why," he said, "do you think he didn't want her to know?"

So that was the thing which had puzzled him in New York, the thing which still puzzled him now.

Well, it had puzzled me, too; and I could give him no answer, except to confess that I didn't know. But long after the train had passed through Dubuque, and Mr. Ewing and I had said good-by, an answer, perhaps right, perhaps wrong, presented itself to my mind.

If one followed Corey at all, one must follow him all the way; perhaps he had wished to save her the pang of an added disgrace.

Havana in the Sunshine

BY ARTHUR BARTLETT MAURICE

HIS is a record of an original impression, of another impression, and of a revised judgment. It may be be personal peculiarity, but in the culiarity, but in the scheme of things neither the book that is dismissed for all time after one reading, nor the place that one does not desire to revisit, really counts. The Scribe-that is the easiest way to avoid the use of the first person singular-has read, for example, Samuel Warren's Ten Thousand a Year. He is acquainted with Mr. Tiddlebat Titmouse, with his hair painted green, and the law firm of Quirk, Snapp & Gammon. The acquaintance constitutes a mental acquisition of more or less importance. But there is not the slightest wish to turn to the pages of the dreary, cumbersome volume again. The book, Ten Thousand a Year, suggests a place, Palm Beach, and recalls long hours of watching the fat, overdressed dowagers on the verandas of The Breakers and the Royal Poinciana, and journeys, propelled by afromobile, through the manmade jungle on the shores of Lake Worth. That experience, too, has its value. No foreigner can crush, because of utter ignorance of that curious aspect of our national life, exclaiming, with superciliously uplifted eyebrows, "What, not know Palm Beach?" as Lord Byron is said once to have turned his back on an American in Europe who confessed that he had never seen Niagara. But so far as personal inclination is concerned, let Palm Beach be consigned to the limbo of memories. The thought of the seemingly endless hotel corridors, the flat golf-links, and the swarming tea-garden provokes not the slightest thrill. But let that be qualified. There is a thrill to the idea of seeing the lights of Palm Beach; with the water-cleaving nose of the ship pointed southward, to see them from the vessel's starboard

side. For that would probably mean that the next morning was to bring the sight of Morro Castle, and Cabañas beyond; and below, across the harbor, the pink-and-white houses of Havana-Havana-in-the-sunshine.

At the beginning, the Scribe is venturing to strike a personal note. It was in the winter of in the winter of 1915, in company with the Illustrator, that he first found Havana and learned to love it. A year passed. Again the sullen skies and the slushy streets of the northern winter bringing the call of the semi-tropics. In making the choice, there was no hesitation. Again Havana. Another year year a year that brought strange changes. The Scribe, a member of the American Commission for Relief in Belgium, was bottled up in the Province of the Brabant. To the north the road to Holland was closed by the wire of swift death, guarded by the rifles and gleaming bayonets in the hands of the German Landsturm. To the south were battling armies. To the west was a forbidden zone of military operations, and, beyond, the mine-infested Channel. To the east was Germany. Six weeks before, the United States had severed diplomatic relations. Three weeks later our Government was to declare formally the existence of a state of war. Our Riviera or Spanish Main seemed likely to be a place of detention. The fact that it was to be in Baden-Baden did not make it any the less a prison. Then came the news that we were to be allowed to go. To our passports, originally marked, "Great Britain, Holland, Belgium. Object: Relief Work," Brand Whitlock added, "Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain." "We shall probably sail for home from Barcelona," explained the director. "It is a roundabout way. The line does not run to the United States, but to Cuba. We must go there first. I am told, however, that Havana is an attractive city." Listening, forgotten

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MORRO GLEAMING LIKE A STAR BEYOND THE LIGHTS THAT THREAD THE MALECÓN

were the leaden Belgian skies, the faces of unutterable sadness, the gray-green uniforms of the invaders. In vision were seen the Prado, and the shoppers in Calle Obispo and Calle O'Reilly, and the broad Malecón, and the dancing waters of the Caribbean, and grim Morro and brown Cabañas. For the moment the stricken land was far away.

It all began with the Illustrator. He is a man of many delightful moods, though inclined to rash promises. These the Scribe, after long years of friendship, has learned to discount. So the issue was decided, not by the assurance that in Cuba could be found the essence of all that Spanish-American life and civilization touching the Caribbean had to offer; or that, in a certain hostelry known as the Dos Hermanos, were served viands surpassing those to be tasted in any restaurant of Madrid; or that the golf-links were of a surpassing richness and beauty, "with real putting-greens, remember that, none of your browns"; or that the Prado was, and the Malecón; or that in the twin thoroughfares, Obispo and O'Reilly, feminine eyes flashed darkly; or that a certain suburb of the city reproduced exactly the color, the flavor, and the architecture of the sub

VOL. CXXXVI.-No. 812.-27

urbs of old Seville. By similar pictured inducements in the years before, the Scribe had been cajoled and led astray. But there was one expression that the Illustrator had used that had outweighed all argument. He had spoken of it as "Havana-in-the-sunshine."

Above the vessel, as it is slipping its East River moorings, rises the wonderful New York sky-line, soon to recede in the distance. It is another world that lies beyond, only three days away. Ah! That leaving the north of February behind, the chilling dampness, the sodden streets, the dull, dirty skies! It does not matter so much what the particular destination may be, in those first hours after sailing, provided it is somewhere. in the direction of the equator. By the time night comes there is a difference in the atmosphere. The next morning there is visible a sun that has been a stranger through the long winter months, a sun that grows hotter and hotter with every hour. That nothing is to be seen. over the great stretch of water save an occasional smoke-spot on the far horizon, counts for little. It is enough to know from the chart that now Hatteras is being turned, or that Charleston Harbor is almost due west, or that the cluster of twinkling lights is The Breakers.

Once the semi-tropics are in the blood, imagination does the rest. It is not a material city that lies at the journey's end, but the Land of the Lotus

eaters.

Most of the steamship lines sailing under the United States flag seem, of late years, to have dropped the term "second cabin," just as motor-car dealers have substituted "used" for "secondhand" machines. There is a more economical state of transportation euphemistically known as "intermediate.' It is found by slipping down a ladder from the upper deck. The artistic temperament, or the urgent need of repose, required that the Illustrator spend the greater part of the day in his state-room, emerging resplendent toward the setting of the sun. Deprived of his society, the Scribe had grown just a little tired of the book, of listening to the reminiscences of the lady from Toledo, and watching the mysterious lady from Philadelphia, whose make-up was the more extraordinary for the reason that it was so perfectly unnecessary. For diversion he slipped down the ladder.

There is always more personality in the intermediate than on the deck above. The people there are more alive, they feel more keenly the pangs of pleasure or pain. First, in the sunshine, in the arms of his trainer, was Scipio, the Magnificent. A week before, on the stage of a New York music-hall, he was firing a gun, doing tricks of bicycle-riding, and dining with an astonishing correctness of deportment. Where did he learn those excellent table manners? Certainly not from his immediate environment. The trainer, fat, florid, mightily mustached. At his nationality one could only guess. His French fluent, but of a Teutonic flavor. The German woman in charge of the trained dogs imparted the information that he spoke German with a marked Italian accent. But two or three Italians shook their heads protestingly. He was no compatriot of theirs. The intermediate was almost entirely professional. Noisily the mem'bers of a theatrical troupe were airing their grievances. The Havana management had promised them first-class transportation. It was so definitely

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