Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/150

126 was a day overdue in camp, and had started out to find him early that morning. Then came the tragedy and the escape, the tidings of which were brought to the camp with the body of Private Smathers. You Han had heard the name "Sweeney" scattered through the excited talk of the company, until he pieced together a working impression of what had happened. He had ransacked canteens, tea-houses and gambling-dens from the camp to the Tatar city wall until he began to pick up the trail from groups at the street corners who had seen the "madman runaway soldier."

The corporal chopped the narrative short, because he was not interested in the way of his fall into the bottomless pit, but in an agony of speculation regarding the new possibility of a way out. The coming of You Han made him clutch the hope of the open country, anywhere, anyhow, no matter what lay beyond. The thought of flight alone among the millions of mysterious aliens had oppressed him horribly. You Han had the fidelity of a dog for the domineering American