He hadn’t told the girl yet about the foot. He didn’t know as he should. He felt lonely and desolate in spite of his joy at getting back to “God’s Country.” He frowned at the hazy outline of the great city from which tall buildings were beginning to differentiate themselves as they drew nearer. There was New York. He meant to see New York, of course. He was a Westerner and had never had an opportunity to go about the metropolis of his own country. Of course, he would see it all. Perhaps, after he was demobilized he would stay there. Maybe he wouldn’t send word he had come back. Let them think he was killed or taken prisoner, or missing, or anything they liked. There were things to do in New York. There were places where he would be welcome even with one foot gone and no cross of war. Thus he mused as the boat drew nearer the shore and the great city loomed close at hand. Then, suddenly, just as the boat was touching the pier and a long murmur of joy went up from the wanderers on board, his eyes dropped idly to the dock and there in her trim little overseas uniform, with the sunlight glancing from the silver letters on the scarlet shield of her trench cap and the smile radiating from her sweet face, stood the very same Salvation Army lassie who had bent over him as he lay on the ground just back of the trenches waiting to be put in the ambulance and taken to the hospital after he had been wounded. He could feel again the throbbing pain in his leg, the sickening pain of his head as he lay in the hot sun, with the flies swarming everywhere, the horrible din of battle all about, and his tongue parched and swollen with fever from lying all night in pain on the wet ground of No Man’s Land. She had laid a soft little hand on his hot forehead, bathed his face, and brought him a cold drink of lemonade. If he lived to be a hundred years old he would never taste anything so good as that lemonade had been. Afterward the doctor said it was the good cold drink that day that saved the lives of those fever patients who had lain so long without attention. Oh, he would never forget the Salvation lassie! And there she was alive and at home! She hadn’t been killed as the fellows had been afraid she would. She had come through it all and here she was always ahead and waiting to welcome a fellow home. It brought the tears smarting to his eyes to think about it, and he leaned over the rail of the ship and yelled himself hoarse with the rest over her, forgetting all about his lost foot. It was hours before they were off the ship. All the red tape necessary for the movement of such a company of men had to be unwound and wound up again smoothly, and the time stretched out interminably; but somehow it did not seem so hard to wait now, for there was someone down there on the dock that he could speak to, and perhaps—just perhaps—he would tell her of his dilemma about his girl. Somehow he felt that she would understand.