“Brace up?” asked Channing.

“Well, it isn’t fair to the rest of us,” protested Keating, launching into his grievance.  “There’s only a few of us here, and we—­we think you ought to see that and not give the crowd a bad name.  All the other correspondents have some regard for—­for their position and for the paper, but you loaf around here looking like an old tramp—­like any old beach-comber, and it queers the rest of us.  Why, those English artillerymen at the Club asked me about you, and when I told them you were a New York correspondent they made all sorts of jokes about American newspapers, and what could I say?”

Channing eyed the other man with keen delight.

“I see, by Jove!  I’m sorry,” he said.  But the next moment he laughed, and then apologized, remorsefully.

“Indeed, I beg your pardon,” he begged, “but it struck me as a sort of—­I had no idea you fellows were such swells—­I knew I was a social outcast, but I didn’t know my being a social outcast was hurting anyone else.  Tell me some more.”

“Well, that’s all,” said Keating, suspiciously.  “The fellows asked me to speak to you about it and to tell you to take a brace.  Now, for instance, we have a sort of mess-table at the hotels and we’d like to ask you to belong, but—­well—­you see how it is—­we have the officers to lunch whenever they’re on shore, and you’re so disreputable”—­ Keating scowled at Channing, and concluded, impotently, “Why don’t you get yourself some decent clothes and—­and a new hat?”

Channing removed his hat to his knee and stroked it with affectionate pity.

“It is a shocking bad hat,” he said.  “Well, go on.”

“Oh, it’s none of my business,” exclaimed Keating, impatiently.  “I’m just telling you what they’re saying.  Now, there’s the Cuban refugees, for instance.  No one knows what they’re doing here, or whether they’re real Cubans or Spaniards.”

“Well, what of it?”

“Why, the way you go round with them and visit them, it’s no wonder they say you’re a spy.”

Channing stared incredulously, and then threw back his head and laughed with a shout of delight.

“They don’t, do they?” he asked.

“Yes, they do, since you think it’s so funny.  If it hadn’t been for us the day you went over to Guantanamo the marines would have had you arrested and court-martialed.”

Channing’s face clouded with a quick frown, “Oh,” he exclaimed, in a hurt voice, “they couldn’t have thought that.”

“Well, no,” Keating admitted grudgingly, “not after the fight, perhaps, but before that, when you were snooping around the camp like a Cuban after rations.”  Channing recognized the picture with a laugh.

“I do,” he said, “I do.  But you should have had me court-martialed and shot; it would have made a good story.  ’Our reporter shot as a spy, his last words were—­’ what were my last words, Keating?”

Keating turned upon him with impatience, “But why do you do it?” he demanded.  “Why don’t you act like the rest of us?  Why do you hang out with all those filibusters and runaway Cubans?”