The Colonel knocked out his pipe.
"Well, Burt, I'll say this," he remarked. "If we could get half the passion into our cause you do into yours, we should do."
"We're fighting a reality, Colonel," the other answered. "You're fighting a shadow, that's the difference."
"I hope to God it may prove so!" said the Colonel, as they shook hands.
The two men thoroughly enjoyed their spars. And the battle was well matched: for the soldier of the Old Army and the soldier of the New were both scholars, well-read, logical, and fair-minded.
On one of his visits the Colonel found Ernie Caspar in the engineer's room standing before the book-shelf, handling the books. Ernie showed himself a little shame-faced in the presence of his old Commanding Officer.
"How do they compare to your father's, Caspar?" asked the Colonel, innocently unaware of the other's mauvaise honte and the cause of it.
"Dad's got ne'er a book now, sir," Ernie answered gruffly. "Only just the Bible, and Wordsworth, and Troward's Lectures. Not as he'd ever anythink like this—only Carpenter. See, dad's not an economist. More of a philosopher and poet like."
"I wish they were mine," said the Colonel, turning over Zimmeni's Greek Commonwealth.
"They're all right if so be you can afford em," answered Ernie shortly, almost sourly.