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white, black or yellow. What disillusioned him, what he did not understand, was that this of the clap should have cost him his bugle when he still could play it just as well as ever, and also that a society girl had given it to him. And what made him mad was that she did not tell him first and leave it up to him to choose, then it would not have been her fault. He found out, that last time he went to see her, after he had convinced her he was not going to beat her up, that she had not known she'had it. After she saw he wouldnt hit her, she cried and she was very sorry. It was a society boy she had known since she was a kid. She was disillusioned, too. And she was having a hell of a time getting herself cured, and on the sly, so her parents would not know. And she was truly very sorry. When he arrived in Schofield Barracks he was still very bitter about the bugle. It was this that made him go back to fighting, here in the Pineapple Army where fighting was even more prolific than it was at Myer. That was his error, but it did not seem so then. The bitterness about the bugle, added to all the other bitternesses, gave him something. Also he had put on more weight and filled out more until he was a welterweight. He won the Company Smoker championship of the 27th and for that he got a corporalcy. Then he went on, when the Division season opened, to make Schofield Class I and become the runner-up in the welterweight division. For that, and because they expected him to win it the next year, he got a sergeantcy. Also, the bitternesses in some subtle way seemed to make him more likeable to every one, although he never did quite figure that one out. Everything would probably have gone on like that indefinitely, since he had convinced himself that bugling was nothing, had it not been for that deathbed promise to his mother and for Dixie Wells. And actually it happened after the season was over. Perhaps it was his temperament, but he seemed to have a very close working alliance with irony. Dixie Wells was a middleweight who loved boxing and lived for boxing. He had enlisted because business was not so good for fighters during the Depression, and because he wanted time to mature his style and season it without being overmatched in some ham and egger, and without having to live on the beans a ham and egger has to eat while he is trying to work up to the big time. He planned to come out of the Army and go right into the upper brackets. A lot of people on the Outside had their eye on him and he was already having fights downtown in Honolulu at the Civic Auditorium. Dixie liked to work with Prewitt because of the other's speed and Prewitt learned a lot from Dixie. They worked together often. Dixie was a heavy middle, but then Prewitt was a heavy welter. They are very professional about those things in the Army; they keep every pound that they can squeeze; they always figure a man for ten pounds more than what he weighs in at when they match him; they dry him out and then after he has weighed in they feed him steak and lots of water. It was Dixie who asked him to work this time, because he had a fight coming up downtown. Also, it was Dixie who wanted to use the six ounce gloves, and they never wore headgear anyway. Things like that happen more often than any one suspects. Prew knew that, and there was no reason why he should feel guilty. He had known a wizard lightweight at Myer who also had a future. Until he went into a civilian gym half-tight one night and wanted to put them on. They used new gloves, and the man who tied them on forgot to cut the metal tips off the laces. Gloves often come untied. This was like the old kid game of crack the whip, a wrist flick drove the metal into the wizard lightweight's eye like an arrow into a target. The fluid of his eye ran down over his cheek and he had to buy a glass one, and as a wizard lightweight he was through. Things like that just happen, every now and then. Prew was set, flat on his feet when he