Trooper Tales — page 175: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Good Which Was in Him. 163 why the big soldier who petted him was so serious that evening. Anyway, he playfully pushed off Allen’s dusty campaign hat with his silky nose, and afterward used the same silky nose to find out what was in the pockets of the big cavalryman’s blue shirt. Dark shadows crept higher and higher up the hills, and. the tropical stars grew steady and whitened. Allen won- dered if there would be a certain letter for him when the steamer did come in—a letter from an American girl whom he had always thought much about, and whose memory had become a great and dear thing to him since he had been a cavalryman. Somehow, his thoughts did not make him happy, but he whistled very cheerily to help him forget. Rio Grande was playful. | Just then the troop-clerk saw the other Allen sitting alone in the gloom at the far end of the stables. The lad was staring away over the hills toward the Northland. The big fellow approached and peered into the other’s face. He saw a strange expression there—the same sort of an expression which he had seen upon the face of ~ another recruit the day before a squad of men were sent out to search for him. “Are you sick, Kid?” the troop-clerk questioned ten- _ derly. He knew well why the silent lad was staring away beyond the shadowy mountains. He knew the nature of the sickness which was upon him—how intense and un- reasoning were his longings, how dark and deep was his suffering. The troop-clerk knew because he had felt and suffered, too, years ago in the first college days. And the CONMICE NOOKS (EO