He went out and not long afterward Dick left the camp in civilian's clothes, but stopped his motorcycle on the hill and stood looking back with a pain at his heart. He saw the rows of tents stretched across the smooth pasture, the flag he had been proud to serve languidly flapping on the gentle breeze, and the water sparkling about the bridge. Along the riverside, bare-armed men in shirts and trousers were throwing up banks of soil with shovels that flashed in the strong light. He could see their cheerful brown faces and a smart young subaltern taking out a measuring line. Dick liked the boy, who now no doubt would pass him without a look, and he envied him with the keenest envy he had ever felt. He had loved his profession; and he was turned out of it in disgrace. It was evening when he stood in the spacious library at home, glad that the light was fading, as he confronted his father, who sat with grim face in a big leather chair. Dick had no brothers and sisters, and his mother had died long before. He had not lived much at home, and had been on good, more than affectionate, terms with his father. Indeed, their relations were marked by mutual indulgence, for Dick had no interest outside his profession, while Mr. Brandon occupied himself with politics and enjoyed his prominent place in local society. He was conventional and his manners were formal and dignified, but Dick thought him very much like Lance, although he had not Lance's genial humor. "Well," he said when Dick had finished, "you have made a very bad mess of things and it is, of course, impossible that you should remain here. In fact, you have rendered it difficult for me to meet my neighbors and take my usual part in public affairs." This was the line Dick had expected him to take. It was his father's pride he had wounded and not his heart. He did not know what to say and, turning his head, he looked moodily out of the open window. The lawn outside was beautifully kept and the flower-borders were a blaze of tastefully assorted colors, but there was something artificial and conventional about the garden that was as marked in the house. Somehow Dick had never really thought of the place as home. "I mean to go away," he said awkwardly. "The puzzling thing is that you should deny having drunk too much," Brandon resumed. "But I hadn't done so! You look at it as the others did. Why should it make matters better if I'd owned to being drunk?" "Drunkenness," his father answered, "is now an offense against good taste, but not long ago it was thought a rather gentlemanly vice, and a certain toleration is still extended to the man who does wrong in liquor. Perhaps this isn't logical, but you must take the world as you find it. I had expected you to learn more in the army than you seem to have picked up. Did you imagine that your promotion depended altogether upon your planning trenches and gun-pits well?"