the night; some of them wear their
blankets like shawls over their shoulders as they were taken from their
beds. The shawls and the head bandages give these British a strange,
foreign look, infinitely helpless, infinitely pitiful.

Nobody seems to be out there but Mrs. Torrence and one or two Belgian
Red Cross men. She and I help to get our two men taken gently out of the
hall and stowed away in the ambulance wagon. There are not enough
blankets. We try to find some.

At the last minute two bearers come forward, carrying a third. He is
tall and thin; he is wrapped in a coat flung loosely over his
sleeping-jacket; he wears a turban of bandages; his long bare feet stick
out as he is carried along. It is Cameron, my poor Highlander, who was
shot through the brain.

They lift him, very gently, into the wagon.

Then, very gently, they lift him out again.

This attempt to save him is desperate. He is dying.

They carry him up the steps and stand him there with his naked feet on
the stone. It is anguish to see those thin white feet on the stone; I
take off my coat and put it under them.

It is all I can do for him.

Presently they carry him back into the Hospital.

They can't find any blankets. I run over to the Hotel Cecil for my
thick, warm travelling-rug to wrap round the knees of the wounded,
shivering in the wagon.

It is all I can do for them.

And presently the wagon is turned round, slowly, almost solemnly, and
driven off into the darkness and the cold mist, with its load of weird
and piteous figures, wrapped in blankets like shawls. Their bandages
show blurred white spots in the mist, and they are gone.

It is horrible.

* * * * *

I am reminded that I have not packed yet, nor dressed for the journey. I
go over and pack and dress. I leave behind what I don't need and it
takes seven minutes. There is something sad and terrible about the
little hotel, and its proprietors and their daughter, who has waited on
me. They have so much the air of waiting, of being on the eve. They hang
about doing nothing. They sit mournfully in a corner of the
half-darkened restaurant. As I come and go they smile at me with the
patient Belgian smile that says, "_C'est triste, n'est-ce pas?_" and no
more.

The landlord puts on his soft brown felt hat and carries my luggage over
to the "Flandria." He stays there, hanging about the porch, fascinated
by these preparations for departure. There is