"Oh, they gave it to me good," he said. "But they still think I got drunk. They took away my stripes and made me a private. But I was sick the night I got back to camp and I've been laid up ever since. They say there is something the matter with my intestines and they're going to cut me open again. Gee, but the captain was surprised! He said he had always counted on me as a teetotaller and that he was grieved and disappointed in me. And just think, I've never taken a drink in my life!"
We said good-by, and this time it was a friendly good-by. That night he left on a hospital ship for Alexandria.
Once more the course of young Mr. "Hamlin's" life was swallowed up in the vast oblivion of army life, and we heard no more of him until, one day in London, three months later, Shepherd felt an arm thrown about his shoulder and turned to find the healthy and cheerful face of "Hamlin."
A few minutes later, at a luncheon-table, Shepherd heard his story.
After leaving Alexandria he was sent to a hospital in Manchester. On the day of his discharge he was asked to report to a certain major, who informed him that the government had conferred upon him the D.C.M.—the medal for Distinguished Conduct in the field—in recognition of his service in recovering a wounded man from No Man's land in Flanders ten months before. The following day, before a file of soldiers drawn up on the parade-ground, the honor was officially conferred and a little ribbon was pinned upon his coat to testify to the appreciative, though somewhat tardy, gratitude of the government.
"Hamlin" pointed to the little ribbon on his lapel and proudly drew from his pocket an official paper in which his heroic achievement was duly recited.
He had not heard of Davis's death, and was deeply touched when Mr. Shepherd told him of it. At once he expressed his endless gratitude to Davis and the rest of us for what we had done for him in Salonika.
In a few days he was to return to France with his regiment. What has happened to him since then I have no means of knowing. His movements are again wrapped in that dense fog which veils the soldier's life to all the outside world except those to whom he writes.
In view of what we now know of Hamlin's physical condition at the time his mind was obsessed with the idea of deserting, both Mr. Shepherd and I are glad to believe that his decision to desert was the consequence of physical rather than mental or moral weakness, for his stamina was at its lowest ebb because of a weakened body.
JOHN T. McCUTCHEON.