Something told me that he wasn’t anywhere near the camp! Any other man would have got there, if he had to break both legs and a couple of ribs. But not my dear sweet concaveman of a brother! But as long as I was there, there was hope. When I left this camp, sometime before midnight—or rather, if I had not left it before that—the die would be cast, and there would certainly be hell to pay in more ways than one. What a wonderful adventure this had turned out to be!!! —3— It was late Sunday night. Leon had not arrived. It was what you might call the eleventh hour and the fifty-ninth minute of this affair, and I was taking it for granted that I was in the soup up to my ears. The die apparently was cast. The Canwick blood seemed to have turned a sour yellow in at least one spot. I didn’t know where Leon was, but I should have assumed hours ago that he would not be there. I don’t know what I could have done about it anyway, except confess and get us both in a stew, but it got my goat to think that I forced myself into this martyrdom. But I was in it—and that’s all there was to it. O Leon, thou personification of courage, thou dear brave considerate brother, I really felt more sorry for you than for myself. A man as yellow as you was a fit object for the world’s pity! I offered to help you with no idea that such consequences could be possible and with, I now realized, a mistaken conception of my brother’s love and gratitude. This situation ceased to be funny a long time ago and if I did not pity him more than I hated him, I’d have given the whole show away before this. And the joke of it was that no doubt he felt confident that I would never do that. And he was quite right: I would go through with my end of this thing in spite of him and his yellow streak. No future day in this man’s army could be any worse than the one I had just put in—and which was not ended yet, so I felt sure that, barring accidents and given any lucky breaks at all, I’d be better able to stand what was coming than he would. If things ever got too bad, I’d throw up my part and let him take the consequences. After all, if I got caught in this, he was the one that would suffer. I doubt if he realized that! However, being a generous and loving sister, I continued to give him the benefit of every possible doubt; I continued to hope that he hadn’t deliberately deserted me in this predicament. And I took it for granted that he would at least be willing to do everything he could to protect me, and later get me out of it. If he did as I told him in my letter, without regard to his petty prejudices and silly comforts, he probably would save me from all sorts of embarrassment and himself from any amount of trouble and worry—for I could get along safely, if I was at all lucky. I’d made up my mind to get along—to lick this game if I had to kill off the general staff man by man.