Trooper Tales — page 177: 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. 165 Darkness closed in with the storm. The other Allen sat silent and sad-eyed in the gloom. “Maybe—she—thinks — I’m — not—worth—writing— to,” the troop-clerk muttered unsteadily. The eyes of the lad were strangely wide open. “Because I’m only a common enlisted man, and because her father is a Congressman.” This moment the troop-clerk looked again at the face of the other Allen. The big cavalryman seemed to forget his own troubles. The other was only a boy. A mother away back in the Northland was yearning for this boy. And his face which the troop-clerk saw in the gathering of the storm and night—well, it told of a heart which was slowly breaking. Two lips closed very tightly that moment. They were the lips of the man who had been a college student once, and whom many people back in the States thought would never amount to much. He was the same big cavalry- man who had longed for a letter from an American girl, and had received none. Looking all the while at the lad, Allen stood very erect, as soldiers are taught to do. Then he swallowed some- thing big and lumpy in his throat, after which he began to whistle loudly. A gust of rain swept through the open door of the quarters, and the sad-eyed soldier moved from his seat and silently sank down upon his bunk. . A half-hour later the troop-clerk said to the top- sergeant: “An order came in to-night for the Kid’s discharge, CONNIE NOOKSs (EC)