He was very red, even to his ears.
"Gawd!" he spluttered. "Does it really say that, sir? Honest?"
Erskine nodded. "Yes," he said. "We'll be lucky if we avoid
international complications."
"An apache murderer," Steve groaned--"and me thinkin' it was a frawg
hero. Will I get a court martial for it, sir?"
"I doubt it," said Erskine, "but I don't think you'll get the
Congressional Medal or the Legion of Honour, either. Maybe, though,
the President, in recognition of your services toward cementing the
entente, will appoint you the next ambassador to France."
"Well, anyway," said Steve, still violently red about the face and
ears--"well, anyway, I don't care. Even if it weren't a first-class
corpse, it was a first-class funeral."
FOOTFALLS
BY WILBUR DANIEL STEELE
From _The Pictorial Review_
This is not an easy story; not a road for tender or for casual feet.
Better the meadows. Let me warn you, it is as hard as that old man's
soul and as sunless as his eyes. It has its inception in catastrophe,
and its end in an act of almost incredible violence; between them it
tells barely how one long blind can become also deaf and dumb.
He lived in one of those old Puritan sea towns where the strain has
come down austere and moribund, so that his act would not be quite
unbelievable.
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