"Do you call that a steady hand?" he asked then. "Man, you're ill, I tell you. Your face is hot and your hands are cold, and your nerves are worn to shoestrings, frayed shoestrings at that. If you keep on, you'll be down flatter than you like. You ought to have stopped four weeks ago."

Weldon crossed his arms at the nape of his neck and lay back at his ease on the ground.

"Then what would have become of my V. C.?" he queried, with languid indifference.

"But I thought you claimed not to care for your V. C."

"I don't. My friends may, however." "As a legacy? I think your friends may possibly choose you to the V. C."

"Foolish of them," Weldon commented. "Still, 'If we could choose the time, and choose aright, 'T were best to die, our honor at the height.' I learned that when I was a small boy; but I've only just found out what it means."

With scoffing lips, but eyes full of unspoken love, Carew turned on his friend.

"Don't dodder, Weldon," he counselled him. "That's canting drivvle, made to console the unsuccessful. No man knows when he has reached his high-water mark. Yours may have come on the day you licked Stevie Ballard for gilding the tailless cat; it may not come till you are ninety."