Sommers resolved to find service in one of the military hospitals that before long became notorious as pestholes. From the day he arrived at Tampa, he found enough to tax all his energies in trying to save the lives of raw troops dumped in the most unsanitary spots a paternal government could select. In the melee created by incompetent officers and ignorant physicians, one single-minded man could find all the duties he craved. Toward the close of the war, on the formation of a new typhoid hospital, Sommers was put in charge. There one day in the heat of the fight with disease and corruption he discovered Parker Hitchcock, who had enlisted, partly as a frolic, an excuse for throwing off the ennui of business, and partly because his set were all going to Cuba. Young Hitchcock had come down with typhoid while waiting in Tampa for a transport, and had been left in Sommers's camp. He greeted the familiar face of the doctor with a welcome he had never given it in Chicago. "Am I going to die in this sink, doctor?" he asked, when Sommers came back to him in the evening. "I can't say," the doctor replied, with a smile. "You are a good deal better off on this board floor than most of the typhoids in the camps, and we will do the best we can. Shall I let your people know?" "No," the young fellow said slowly, his weak, white face endeavoring to restrain the tears. "The old man is in a bad place--Uncle Brome, you know--and I guess if it hadn't been for my damn foolishness in New York--" He went off into delirious inconsequence, and on the way back Sommers stopped to telegraph Miss Hitchcock. A few days later he met her at the railroad station, and drove her over to the camp. She was worn from her hurried journey, and looked older than Sommers expected; but the buoyancy and capability of her nature seemed indomitable. Sommers repeated to her what Parker had said about not letting his people know. "It's the first time he ever thought of poor papa," she said bluntly. "I thought it might do him good to fight it out by himself. But loneliness kills some of these fellows." "Poor Parker!" she exclaimed, with a touch of irony in her tone. "He thought he should come home a hero, with flags flying, all the honors of the season, and forgiveness for his little faults. The girls would pet him, and papa would overlook his past. The war was a kind of easy penance for all his sins. And he never reached Cuba even, but came down with typhoid--due to pure carelessness, I am afraid." "That is a familiar story," the doctor observed, with a grim smile, "especially in his set. They took the war as a kind of football match--and it is just as well they did." "You are the ones that really know what it means--the doctors and the nurses," Miss Hitchcock said warmly. "Here is our San Juan," Sommers replied dryly, pointing to the huddle of tents and pine sheds that formed the hospital camp.