himself.

Then the three stood by the rail, at the gangplank, waiting for the
hurried stream of passengers to disembark. Down on the wharf under the
glaring white lights, swarmed a crowd from which rose a babel of
voices. A whistle blew sharply at intervals. The whirr and honk of
taxicabs, and the jangle of trolley cars, sounded beyond the wide dark
portal of the dock-house. The murky water below splashed between ship
and pier. Deep voices rang out, and merry laughs, and shrill glad
cries of welcome. The bright light shone down upon a motley,
dark-garbed mass, moving slowly. The spirit of the occasion was
manifest.

When the three disabled soldiers, the last passengers to disembark,
slowly and laboriously descended to the wharf, no one offered to help
them, no one waited with a smile and hand-clasp of welcome. No one saw
them, except a burly policeman, who evidently had charge of the
traffic at the door. He poked his club into the ribs of the
one-legged, slowly shuffling Maynard and said with cheerful gruffness:
"Step lively, Buddy, step lively!"

Lane, with his two comrades, spent three days at a barracks-hospital
for soldiers in Bedford Park. It was a long flimsy structure, bare
except for rows of cots along each wall, and stoves at middle, and
each end. The place was overcrowded with disabled service men, all
worse off than Lane and his comrades. Lane felt that he really was
keeping a sicker man than himself from what attention the hospital
afforded. So he was glad, at the end of the third day, to find they
could be discharged from the army.