Government was going to keep him at these springs when their water did him no good. He knew of the bitter denunciations that were being made all over the country of those in charge of caring for our returned soldiers. He knew of the red tape, the graft, and the slowness involved in reaching the boys with the treatment that they needed and which should have been accorded them with all the speed that was used in starting them on their perilous venture. He knew there was bitterness in the heart of almost every wounded man on this point. There was poignant bitterness in his own heart. So many weeks had been wasted. So many months had passed before decision had been made as to what was to be done, and how it was to be done, and where it was to be done. So much had been taken for granted and so little efficiently accomplished after peace had been declared.
In his enforced moments of rest, he kept lifting his eyes to the sky. He could not look at the sky without his thoughts climbing very high, and sometimes that morning they almost skirted the foot of the throne. He realized that he would have given anything in this world if he could have gone home and knelt at the knees of his mother, laid his head on her lap, and tried the one thing that he had not yet tried—just the plain, old-fashioned thing of asking God for the help he had not been able to secure from man.
And so at last he had reached the palms and roses, the loquats and oranges, and the grape-covered slopes where cultivation had begun to provide food for those who lived on the mountain-top. He looked at the bloom–laden
