“I’ll tell you, buddy. You said war is murder. You said you guessed mebbe the Germans wasn’t your enemy at all. You said you wouldn’t fight in another war to please God Almighty hisself. And all them,” said Bill, curling his lips in cruel mockery, “was a hell of a crack. Did you think they got all them-there brass bands and speeches and popcorn trimmings to hear you throw them Christian sentiments in their teeth? Was they intendun to make you assistant sheriff if you didn’t like to fight?” Bill’s smile was evil. “Buddy,” he said, “you fanned. You swung plumb hard and missed and fell right on your mug.” “What did they expect?” asked John, staring, fascinated, at Bill’s sinister eyes. “God damn, buddy, that’s a stupid question. They wanted you to tell how you made them Huns jump back over the Rhine like a buncha frogs—.” “But I didn’t,” John said. “Oh, the jumped-up holy ghost!” Bill drew the weak muscles of his face down until his upper lip lay across his lower teeth. He smiled with mirthless cunning and looked at John with gentle pitying amazement. “Buddy, you wanta know how to be a hero again? I’ll tell you. You say war’s a swell thing if you’re on the right side—and you was on the right side, buddy—” Bill’s grin was chilling. “You tell how you rammed them Huns in their guts and piled them up in the Rhine until it run backwards. And if you could tell how you saved a virtuous woman—say, for the love of virgins, couldn’t you tell a story like that? Buddy, that would put you right on top of the popcorn pile with a cigar in your face a yard long. Well,” he said, and spit straight down between his knees, “you get the idea.” But it was a difficult idea for John Benton to grasp. He walked around like a tall pale ghost of a man, with spiritual anguish in his thin, sensitive face. He wanted persons to like him. He wanted persons to remember Jesus, as he had remembered Him for two years in France, and to look far into the ways of kindliness and mercy. But Bill, meeting him now, gave him a cynical yellow smile and a jab in his ribs. “Be fierce,” he said, smirking wisely, “and blow your horn.” And again: “Buddy, stop lookun like one of the twelve apostles, huntun around for the coast of Galilee. Sail out and tell them-there big stomachs what they wanta hear.” And John, after days of wretched indecision, resolved to try.