re it was spread out beyond all
dealing with. She had to face it without solutions.

There, in the Convent, known now as Military Hospital Number One, was
row after row of Khaki men in bed. They had overflowed to the stone
floor down the long corridors, hundreds of yards of length, and every
foot close packed, like fish in a tin, with helpless outstretched men.
The grey stones and the drab suits on the bundles of straw,--what a
backwash from the tides of slaughter. If a man stood on his feet, he had
to reach for a cane. There were no whole men there, except the busy
stretcher-bearers bringing in new tenants for the crowded smelly place.

As quickly as they could unload their men, and stuff them into the
corridor, Hilda and the doctor and Woffington sped back down the line,
and up to the thronged dressing-stations. Wounded men were not their
only charge, nor their gravest. They took in a soldier sobbing from the
shock of the ceaseless shell fire. The moaning and wasp-like buzz of the
flying metal, then the earth-shaking thud of its impact, and the roar of
its high explosive, had played upon nerves not elastic enough to absorb
the strain, till the man became a whimpering child. And they carried in
a man shaking from ague, a big, fine fellow, trembling in every part,
who could not lift a limb to walk. That which had been rugged enough
for a lifetime of work became palsied after a few weeks of this king's
sport. This undramatic slaughter was slower than the work of the guns,
but it was as thorough. A man with colic was put into the car.

"I'm bad," he said. The pain kept griping him, so that he rode leaning
down with his face pointed at the footboard.

Working as Hilda worked, with her two efficient friends and a
well-equipped dressing-station, their own hospital only seven miles to
the rear of them, she had been able to measure up to any situation that
had been thrust at her. It was buckle to it, and work furiously, and
clean up the mess, and then on to the next. But here was a wide-spread
misery that overwhelmed her. Dr. McDonnell was as silent as the girl. He
had a sensitiveness to suffering which twenty years of London practice
had not dulled.

The day wore along, with spurt after spurt to the front, and then the
slower drive back, when Woffington guided the car patiently and
skilfully, so that the wounded men inside should not be shaken by the
motion. They had a snack of luncheon with them, and ate it while they
r