“He was a sorry, unsoldierly sight.  Gone to pieces.  Unnerved.  All in.  His chin was quivering.  And then the little lieutenant came along, starting out for golf.  He stood in front of him and looked him up and down—­this boy who had been caught.  Boy who would be imprisoned.  And as he looked at him he laughed; or smiled rather, that smile that was a sneer.

“He stood there continuing to smile—­torturing him with that smile he couldn’t do a thing about—­this boy who was down; this fellow who was all in.  That was when I struck him in the face and knocked him down.

“The penalty for that, as I presume I need not tell an army girl, is death.  ‘Or such other punishment as a court martial may direct.’

“The thing directed in my case was imprisonment at Fort Leavenworth for five years.  Most of the men in that prison would say, ‘Give me death.’

“I’d better not say much about it.  Something gets hot in my head when I begin to talk about it.  If you were with me—­your cooling hand, your steadying eyes—­I could tell you about it.  ‘If you were with me’!  I find that a very arresting phrase, Katie.

“Those were black years.  Cruel years.  Years to twist a man’s soul.  They took something from me that will not be mine again.  I remember your telling how Ann said there were things to make perfect happiness forever impossible.  She was right.  There are hours that stay.

“I went into the army just an adventurous boy.  I came from it an embittered man.  My experience with it made me suspect all of life.  I was more than unhappy.  I was sullen.  I hated—­and I wanted to get even.  Oh it was a lovely spirit in which I went forth a second time to meet the world.

“I don’t know what might not have happened, I think I was right in line to become a criminal, like so many of the rest of them who have served time at Leavenworth—­I don’t suppose the United States has any finer school anywhere than its academy for criminals at Fort Leavenworth—­had it not been for a man I met.

“I got a job in a garage.  I had always been pretty good at mechanical things and knew a little about it.  And there I met this man—­and through him came salvation.

“I don’t know, Katie, maybe socialism will not save the world.  I don’t see how it can miss it—­but be that as it may, I know it has saved many a man’s soul.  I know it saved mine.

“This fellow—­an older man with whom I worked—­talked to me.  He saw the state I was in, won my confidence and got my story.  And then he began talking to me and gave me books.  He got me to come to his house instead of the places I was going to, saying nothing against the other places, but just making his things so much more attractive.  We used to talk and argue and gradually other things fell away just because there was no room for them.

“You know I had loved books—­read all I could get—­but didn’t seem to get the right ones.  Well, after I had served time breaking clay I didn’t care anything about books—­too sore, too dogged, too full of hate.  But the love for the books came back, and through the books, and through this friend, came the splendid saving vision.