“The folks who’d cheered him when he went to fight for ’em had cheered away a lot of their spare patri’tism by that time. There wa’nt enough of it left in Granite to give my father a fair start in the world again. Because he’d learned to drink, to loaf, to be uneasy an’ unreliable when he worked, they forgot he’d picked up those tricks while he was defendin’ their country. Heroes was a drug in the market. If any of you fellers know how it feels to get down to work the day after your fortnight’s vacation, maybe you can understand what it meant to him to settle down to a job after four years in the open.” Conover glanced again at his father. The old man had ceased to mumble and was trying to follow the Fighter’s speech. The slack jaw had tightened; and the huddled form was struggling slowly to its feet. “He tried to work,” resumed Conover, “but younger, smarter folks with steadier business trainin’ was grabbin’ all the good jobs. Yet he got what he could, an’ for awhile he did the best he knew how. Then he saw a chance to make things easier for my mother an’ me. He’d been used to seein’ his off’cers in the army paddin’ expense accounts an’ gettin’ graft on fodder bills an’ such. He’d seen contractors grow rich by sellin’ the Gov’ment shoddy blankets an’ rotten food. Was it any worse for _him_ to scamp weights on the coal scales? That’s what he done. Not in big quantities as if he was a financier; but a few cents a day as he got the chance. “That was his mistake. If he’d stole a million he’d a’ been a big man in Granite. But he hadn’t the brain to do more’n foller, a long way off, the example of the men he’d been taught to obey for four years. Because he stole so little an’ so stoopidly, they found him out. They didn’t stop to ask if he’d used the miser’ble little sums of pilfered money to make his home happier an’ buy things for his sick wife. Those arguments don’t cut much ice in law. He was just a common thief. An’ they sent him to States prison. Me an’ my mother could starve, for all the law cared. The bread winner was locked up. That was all holy Justice asked for. _We_ could die of hunger if we wanted to, now that the law had taken away the man who had stole to keep us alive. “I guess you folks has read of the way men get treated in those places where the State gives ’em a chance to repent of their sins. For five years my father lived in a stone cubbyhole an’ had for chums a choice c’lection of the Devil’s Own Brigade. Not a soul in all that time to speak a decent word to him,--to say ‘Please,’ in givin’ him his orders. It sounds like a small thing to have no one say ‘Please’ to you. But try it some time.