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 dit's rifle, until he had reduced their numbers, and then closed in; whether the last of them had put up much of a fight, and how Tom had managed to come through without a scratch. Jim drew the guests around him by his loud and insistent interrogation, which was not intended for anything but lively, admiring, friendly interest, no matter for its rudeness.

Tom tried to back out of it, as if they had cornered him with some shameful accusation, levelling the matter down with his expressive hands, smoothing it to a thing of utmost simplicity, so small and unworthy that it did not merit a word. He said it really amounted to nothing at all; that it was all over, anyhow, and they must excuse him from discussing it, or any phase of it, now.

Louise understood how hard it was for him, generous, modest, truly valiant as she knew him to be. She thought that if Jim Kelly, and some of the others who looked at Tom with their uncomprehending, bold stare of curiosity, could see as deeply into his heart as she had seen, they never would say again that he had come through that experience without a scratch.

Laylander had left something out of his youth and the redundant joy of his life on that hard ride into No Man's Land. There was a wound in the plastic soul of his young manhood that gaped wide and deep. Time would cicatrize it into a harsh, rought scar; memory would touch it in after years with a shudder. A gentleman does not live through an experience such as that and come away unmarked.