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In her letter to one who was, after all, only an acquaintance, the young widow had gone into no details. But, just by chance, Radmore had seen a paragraph in a week-old London paper containing an account of the inquest. Colonel Crofton had committed suicide, a result, it was stated, of depression owing to shell-shock. "Shell-shock" gave Radmore pause.

In one instance two rooms that should at most have held four or five sleepers were found to contain fifteen, a week-old baby among them. Most of them were lodgers and slept there for "five cents a spot." There was no pretence of beds.

For an instant he felt dazed, half-stunned, suffocating, much as he had felt with Greggs' fingers tightening on his windpipe, that week-old night at Troyon's; he experienced real difficulty about breathing, and was conscious of a sickish throbbing in his temples and a pounding in his bosom like the tolling of a great bell. He stared, swaying....

June roses were laid against her dark hair and in her fair hands, when she was carried to the lonely graveyard of Greenfield, where mulleins and asters, golden-rod, blackberry-vines, and stunted yellow-pines adorned the last sleep of the weary wife and mother; for she left behind her a week-old baby, a girl, wailing prophetically in the square bedroom where its mother died.

As a rule the new levies went down into France on troop trains, but this company was part of a draft which for some reason came afoot. Without exception they were young men, husky and hearty and inspired with a beefish joviality at having found a place where they could ease their feet, and rest their legs, and slake their week-old thirst upon their own soothing brews.

The baby is a beast, a very soft, tender, caressive beast, a beast full of promise, a beast with the germ of an angel, but a beast still. A week-old baby gives no more sign of intelligence, of love, or ambition, or hope, or fear, or passion, or purpose, than a week-old monkey, and is not half so frisky and funny. In fact, it is a puling, scowling, wretched, dismal, desperate-looking animal.

Long Jack stood it in silence for a time, an angry skipper makes an unhappy crew, and then he spoke across the table after supper: "Fwhat's the good o' bodderin' fwhat they'll say?" said he. "They'll tell that tale agin us fer years that's all," said Disko. "Oil-cake sprinkled!" "With salt, o' course," said Salters, impenitent, reading the farming reports from a week-old New York paper.

Dinner was therefore a solitary meal for me, and when it was all over I endeavoured to plunge into some medical literature. The hours passed slowly. It was almost impossible to read, for the process, to me, was similar to trying to take an interest in a week-old newspaper. The thought of the bacillus made the pages seem colourless; it dwarfed all meaning in the words.

"There's no one like a week-old freshman for self-importance," Cowan said, laughing in order to hide his vexation. "Unless it's a third-year sophomore," Neil retorted. "Oh, well," Paul interposed, "it's all poppycock, anyhow." "That's all," said Livingston. "Of course," agreed Cowan. Neil was silent. Life now was filled with hard work for both Neil and Paul.

Then memory bringing a deep twinkle to his eye, he added: "What think you, monsieur? I was left a week-old babe on the monastery step; was reared up in holiness within its sacred walls; chorister at ten, novice at eighteen, full-fledged friar, fasting, praying, and singing misereres, exhorting dying saints and living sinners, at twenty." "A very pretty brotherhood, you for sample."