of the rigid, erect soldiers.  Lane, arm in arm with Blair, face to the front, stood absorbed in his sense of a nameless sublimity for them while passing the Statue of Liberty.  The spirit of the first man who ever breathed of freedom for the human race burned as a white flame in the heart of Lane and his comrade.  But it was not so much that spirit which held them erect, aloof, proud.  It was a supreme consciousness of immeasurable sacrifice for an ideal that existed only in the breasts of men and women kindred to them—­an unutterable and never-to-be-spoken glory of the duty done for others, but that they owed themselves.  They had sustained immense loss of health and happiness; the future seemed like the gray, cold, gloomy expanse of the river; and there could never be any reward except this white fire of their souls.  Nameless!  But it was the increasing purpose that ran through the ages.

The ship docked at dark.  Lane left Blair at the rail, gloomily gazing down at the confusion and bustle on the wharf, and went below to search for their comrade, Red Payson.  He found him in his stateroom, half crouched on the berth, apparently oblivious to the important moment.  It required a little effort to rouse Payson.  He was a slight boy, not over twenty-two, sallow-faced and freckled, with hair that gave him the only name his comrades knew him by.  Lane packed the boy’s few possessions and talked vehemently all the time.  Red braced up, ready to go, but he had little to say and that with the weary nonchalance habitual with him.  Lane helped him up on deck, and the exertion, slight as it was, brought home to Lane that he needed help himself.  They found Maynard waiting.

“Well, here we are—­the Three Musketeers,” said Lane, in a voice he tried to make cheerful.

“Where’s the band?” inquired Maynard, sardonically.

“Gay old New York—­and me broke!” exclaimed Red Payson, as if to himself.

Then the three stood by the rail, at the gangplank, waiting for the hurried stream of passengers to disembark.  Down on the wharf under the glaring white lights, swarmed a crowd from which rose a babel of voices.  A whistle blew sharply at intervals.  The whirr and honk of taxicabs, and the jangle of trolley cars, sounded beyond the wide dark portal of the dock-house.  The murky water below splashed between ship and pier.  Deep voices rang out, and merry laughs, and shrill glad cries of welcome.  The bright light shone down upon a motley, dark-garbed mass, moving slowly.  The spirit of the occasion was manifest.

When the three disabled soldiers, the last passengers to disembark, slowly and laboriously descended to the wharf, no one offered to help them, no one waited with a smile and hand-clasp of welcome.  No one saw them, except a burly policeman, who evidently had charge of the traffic at the door.  He poked his club into the ribs of the one-legged, slowly shuffling Maynard and said with cheerful gruffness:  “Step lively, Buddy, step lively!”