everything in the agony of the heavy cement bags bearing down on his back and hips. In the truck on the way back to the mess the Kid, looking fresh and smiling among the sweating men, like ghosts from the white dust, talking hoarsely above the clatter of the truck, sidled up very close to Andrews. “D'you like swimmin', Skinny?” “Yes. I'd give a lot to get some of this cement dust off me,” said Andrews, without interest. “I once won a boy's swimmin' race at Coney,” said the Kid. Andrews did not answer. “Were you in the swimmin' team or anything like that, Skinny, when you went to school?” “No.... It would be wonderful to be in the water, though. I used to swim way out in Chesapeake Bay at night when the water was phosphorescent.” Andrews suddenly found the Kid's blue eyes, bright as flames from excitement, staring into his. “God, I'm an ass,” he muttered. He felt the Kid's fist punch him softly in the back. “Sergeant said they was goin' to work us late as hell tonight,” the Kid was saying aloud to the men round him. “I'll be dead if they do,” muttered Hoggenback. “An' you a lumberjack!” “It ain't that. I could carry their bloody bags two at a time if I wanted ter. A feller gets so goddam mad, that's all; so goddam mad. Don't he, Skinny?” Hoggenback turned to Andrews and smiled. Andrews nodded his head. After the first two or three bags Andrews carried in the afternoon, it seemed as if every one would be the last he could possibly lift. His back and thighs throbbed with exhaustion; his face and the tips of his fingers felt raw from the biting cement dust. When the river began to grow purple with evening, he noticed that two civilians, young men with buff-colored coats and canes, were watching the gang at work. “They says they's newspaper reporters, writing up how fast the army's being demobilized,” said one man in an awed voice. “They come to the right place.” “Tell 'em we're leavin' for home now. Loadin' our barracks bags on the steamer.” The newspaper men were giving out cigarettes. Several men grouped round them. One shouted out: “We're the guys does the light work. Blackjack Pershing's own pet labor battalion.” “They like us so well they just can't let us go.” “Damn jackasses,” muttered Hoggenback, as, with his eyes to the ground, he passed Andrews. “I could tell 'em some things'd make their goddam ears buzz.” “Why don't you?” “What the hell's the use? I ain't got the edication to talk up to guys like that.” The sergeant, a short, red-faced man with a mustache clipped very short, went up to the group round the newspaper men. “Come on, fellers, we've got a hell of a lot of this cement to get in before it rains,” he said in a kindly voice; “the sooner we get it in, the sooner we get off.” “Listen to that bastard, ain't he juss too sweet for pie when there's company?” muttered Hoggenback on his way from the barge with a bag of cement. The Kid brushed past Andrews without looking at him.