The Splendid Outcast

Horton obeyed, for he found himself too weak to oppose her. It was very restful here; he wriggled his toes luxuriously against the soft sheets for a moment. If things would only stop whirling around.... And the pain ... but that seemed to cease again and he slept. Indeed his awakening was only to half-consciousness. Other days and nights followed when he lay in a sort of doze, aware of much suffering and a great confusion of thought. But slowly, as he grew stronger, the facts of his present position emerged from the dimness and with them a mild curiosity, scarcely lucid as yet, as to how he had gotten there. At last there came a morning when the fog upon his memory seemed to roll aside and he began to recall one by one the incidents that had preceded his unconsciousness.

There had been a fight. Some fight that was. Huns all over the place--in a ring around the rocks, up in the branches of the trees--everywhere. But he had held on until the Boches had started to run when the American line advanced. He remembered that the Engineers could do other things besides build saps and bridges. Good old Engineers! Something was wrong--somewhere.

Out of his clouded brain, slowly, the facts came to him--things that had happened before the fight--just before. Harry--his twin brother Harry, lying in the ditch just behind Jim's squad of Engineers, a coward, in a blue funk--afraid to carry out his Major's orders to go forward and investigate. A coward, of course! Harry would be. He had always been a coward.

Jim Horton sighed, his mind, ambling weakly into vacancy, suddenly arrested by a query.

What else?--What else had happened? Something to do with the remarkable likeness between himself and Harry? The likeness,--so strong that only their own mother had been able to tell them apart.

Memory came to him with a rush. He remembered now what had happened in the darkness, what he had done. Taken Harry's lieutenant's uniform, giving the coward his own corporal's outfit. Then he, Jim Horton, had gone on and carried out the Major's orders, leaving the coward writhing in the ditch.

By George!----the fight--he, Jim Horton, had won the victory at Boissiere Wood for the --th Infantry--for Harry!--as Harry!

Perhaps, he was really Harry and not Jim Horton at all? He glanced around him curiously, as though somewhat amused at the metempyschosis. And then thoughtfully shook his head.

No. He was Jim Horton, all right--Jim Horton. There was no mistake about that.

But Harry! Imagine meeting Harry in a situation like that after all these years! A coward! Not that that was a very surprising thing. Harry had always been a quitter. There was nothing that Harry could do or be that wasn't utterly despicable in the eyes of his brother Jim, and after having spent the best part of five years trying to live the memory of Harry down----

The nurse appeared silently and looked into Jim Horton's eyes. He closed them a moment and then smiled at her.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"Better--lots better," he answered; "you see, I can really think----"

"I wouldn't try to do that--not yet."

"Oh, I'm all right." And the nurse was ready for the first time to believe that her patient was to remain this side of the border line of the dim realm into which she had seen so many go, for his eyes were clear and he spoke with definite assurance. But the question that he asked made her dubious again.