"I passed up a chance at a commission in '15--because I was still too class-conscious. But I grabbed the next chance. That's what I'm going to do in civil life--grab chances. I don't know how, yet. I don't think much. I'm still in the army, and in the army you're not supposed to think. But I didn't run wild in France, except for brief spells, so I've saved most of my pay. And I hear talk of a gratuity to us heroes," he smiled broadly. "I'll probably come out with a couple of thousand dollars. After that--well, you see before you a man who has had a bayonet stuck through his leg, his carcass lightly punctured with shrapnel, one or two faint whiffs of gas. None of which did him more harm than to give him long spells of lying still and thinking. And he thought himself into a condition of mind that will prevent him from ever again working hard--for other people. No, Norquay, I will never again labor faithfully to make two dollars grow--for some one else--where only one grew before. I don't believe I could feel the slightest obligation toward a job again, or an atom of pride in doing a job well. You see, I can't lose sight of the job-owners--I don't like 'em. I despise 'em. They got us all into this mix-up. They called us to arms in the name of all the old gods that man has been taught to reverence. And then they laid down on us, and went to making money out of our necessities. No, whenever a man offers me a job, I'll think of war contracts, of seventeen prices for clothes and food, of the bonds they've salted away, of shoddy boots and defective ammunition--and the fact that some of them are secretly sorry the war is over and the big, easy money at an end. No, I couldn't be loyal to a job, with all that in my mind." "Fiddlesticks," Rod answered this last. "If I had a stand of timber and I said to you, 'Here's a crew and machinery--go to it; you've got a free hand,' you'd get it out for me as if you were getting it out for yourself." "Well," Andy hesitated, "if you bring yourself into it, that's different. You don't come in any of the categories I mentioned, or I'm very much mistaken. Operating a real job for a man you could like and respect. That is different."