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Next morning, though, he felt more himself, and inclined to joke. And then there was a talk with old Man Hatton; a talk that left Buzz somewhat numb, and the family breathless.

Visitors again, all that afternoon.

After supper he carried water for the garden, against his mother’s outraged protests.

“What’ll folks think!” she said, “you carryin’ water for me?”

Afterward he took his smart visored cap off the hook and limped down town, his boots and leggings and uniform very spick and span from Ma Werner’s expert brushing and rubbing. She refused to let Buzz touch them, although he tried to tell her that he had done that job for a year.

At the corner of Grand and Outagamie, in front of Schroeder’s drug store, stood what was left of the gang, and some new members who had come during the year that had passed. Buzz knew them all.

They greeted him at first with a mixture of shyness and resentment. They eyed his leg, and his uniform, and the metal and ribbon thing that hung at his breast. Bing and Red and Spider were there. Casey was gone.

Finally Spider spat and said, “G’wan, Buzz, give us your spiel about how you saved young Hatton–the simp!”

“Who says he’s a simp?” inquired Buzz, very quietly. But there was a look about his jaw.

“Well–anyway–the papers was full of how you was a hero. Say, is that right that old Hatton’s goin’ to send you to college? Huh? Je’s!”

“Yeh,” chorused the others, “go on, Buzz. Tell us.”

Red put his question. “Tell us about the fightin’, Buzz. Is it like they say?”

It was Buzz Werner’s great moment. He had pictured it a thousand times in his mind as he lay in the wet trenches, as he plodded the muddy French roads, as he reclined in his wheel chair in the hospital garden. He had them in the hollow of his hand. His eyes brightened. He looked at the faces so eagerly fixed on his utterance.

“G’wan, Buzz,” they urged.

Buzz opened his lips and the words he used were the words he might have used a year before, as to choice. “There’s nothin’ to tell. A guy didn’t have no time to be scairt. Everything kind of come at once, and you got yours, or either you didn’t. That’s all there was to it. Je’s, it was fierce!”

They waited. Nothing more. “Yeh, but tell us–“

And suddenly Buzz turned away. The little group about him fell back, respectfully. Something in his face, perhaps. A quietness, a new dignity.

“S’long, boys,” he said. And limped off, toward home.

And in that moment Buzz, the bully and braggart, vanished forever. And in his place–head high, chest up, eyes clear–limped Ernest Werner, the man.