It was late in the evening of the same day when he stepped out of the smoking-car into the roar and riot of the Grand Central Station.  He had no baggage to detain him, and, as he had no money either, he made his way to an Italian restaurant where he knew they would trust him to pay later for what he ate.  It was a place where the newspaper men were accustomed to meet, men who knew him, and who, until he found work, would lend him money to buy a bath, clean clothes, and a hall bedroom.

Norris, the World man, greeted him as he entered the door of the restaurant, and hailed him with a cry of mingled fright and pleasure.

“Why, we didn’t know but you were dead,” he exclaimed.  “The boys said when they left Kingston you weren’t expected to live.  Did you ever get the money and things we sent you by the Red Cross boat?”

Channing glanced at himself and laughed.

“Do I look it?” he asked.  He was wearing the same clothes in which he had slept under the fruit-sheds at Port Antonio.  They had been soaked and stained by the night-dews and by the sweat of the fever.

“Well, it’s great luck, your turning up here just now,” Norris assured him, heartily.  “That is, if you’re as hungry as the rest of the boys are who have had the fever.  You struck it just right; we’re giving a big dinner here to-night,” he explained, “one of Maria’s best.  You come in with me.  It’s a celebration for old Keating, a farewell blow-out.”

Channing started and laughed.

“Keating?” he asked.  “That’s funny,” he said.  “I haven’t seen him since—­since before I was ill.”

“Yes, old Jimmie Keating.  You’ve got nothing against him, have you?”

Channing shook his head vehemently, and Norris glanced back complacently toward the door of the dining-room, from whence came the sound of intimate revelry.

“You might have had, once,” Norris said, laughing; “we were all up against him once.  But since he’s turned out such a wonder and a war-hero, we’re going to recognize it.  They’re always saying we newspaper men have it in for each other, and so we’re just giving him this subscription-dinner to show it’s not so.  He’s going abroad, you know.  He sails to-morrow morning.”

“No, I didn’t know,” said Channing.

“Of course not, how could you?  Well, the Consolidated Press’s sending him and his wife to Paris.  He’s to cover the Peace negotiations there.  It’s really a honeymoon-trip at the expense of the C. P. It’s their reward for his work, for his Santiago story, and the beat and all that—­”

Channing’s face expressed his bewilderment.

Norris drew back dramatically.

“Don’t tell me,” he exclaimed, “that you haven’t heard about that!”

Channing laughed a short, frightened laugh, and moved nearer to the street.

“No,” he said.  “No, I hadn’t.”