"I hope not to have any more help from you, either. You got me into the scrape; I'll see to the rest," Thaine replied. "Don't I look all right? I haven't had a bath, except in swamp mud, since the first of February. Today is the twenty-third of March. Neither have I seen a razor. Notice my silky beard. Nor a dress suit, nor a--anything else civilized. Six weeks in one hole, killing Filipinos for our amusement and dodging their old Remingtons for theirs, living on army rations and respect for the flag of my country, may not improve my appearance, but it hasn't started me to the sick-shack yet. Any news from home?" Thaine ended with the question put so carelessly, with a face so impenetrable that Doctor Carey took notice at once. "Homesick!" was his mental diagnosis, but he answered with equal carelessness. "Yes, I had a letter from Leigh Shirley." Thaine's eyes were too full of unspeakable things now for him to hold out. "She says the alfalfa is doing well. She and Jim have kept up all the interest, and are beginning to reduce the principal. That's why she wrote." "Brave little soldier," Thaine muttered. "Yes, civil life has its heroes, too," the doctor responded. "She also says," he continued, "that John Jacobs has had Hans Wyker convicted of running a joint and Hans had to pay a fine and stick in the Careyville jail thirty days. Hans won't love John for that when he gets out." "What a hater of whisky John Jacobs is. He's always on the firing line and never misses his aim, bless him!" Thaine declared. "Yes, Jacobs' battle is a steady one. He told me just before I left Kansas how his mother was killed in a saloon in Cincinnati when she was trying to get his father out of it. John wouldn't live in a state that had no prohibitory law," the doctor commented. "Did Leigh write anything else?" Thaine asked. "Yes. Jo Bennington and Todd Stewart are married. Pryor Gaines is in Pekin, and he writes that there are rumblings of trouble over there. Shall we go over and settle it when we finish the Filipino fuss?" "Might as well. I'd like to see old Pryor. I'm glad Todd and Jo had sense enough to take each other. I suppose Jo overcame her notions of living only in the city. What else?" Thaine replied. "Nothing else. That's your message." Carey's black eyes held a shrewd twinkle. "Why mine?" The impenetrable face was on Thaine again. "See here, boy, don't think I haven't read her story, page by page. If Leigh had sent you a single line, I'd have begun to doubt." Thaine threw one arm about the doctor's shoulder and said not a word. Then Carey read his story also. "I nearly forgot to tell you that Leigh is doing well with her drawings. She sent me this, for which she had a good price paid her."