ng at the tense muscles of the grim, square face
and the purposeful right hand that hovers near the butt of the Doctor's
revolver. "For your own sake as much as for his!"

Saxham's laugh is ugly to hear.

"Do you think that Lord Beauvayse would wind up as top-dog if it came to a
struggle between us?"

"It must not come to a struggle, Saxham," says the Chaplain, very pale.
"We--we are under Martial Law. He is your superior officer." (Saxham,
Attached Medical Staff, holds the honorary rank of Lieutenant in Her
Majesty's Army.) "Remember, if Carslow--the man who killed Vickers, of the
_Pittsburg Trumpeter_"--he refers to a grim tragedy of the beginning of
the siege--"had not been medically certified insane, they would have taken
him out and shot him."

Saxham shrugs his massive shoulders, and with the utter unmelodiousness
that distinguishes the performance of a man devoid of a musical ear,
whistles a fragment of a little tune. It is often on the lips of another
man, and the Doctor has picked it up unconsciously, with one or two other
characteristic habits and phrases, and has fallen into the habit of
whistling it as he goes doggedly, unwearyingly, upon his ever-widening
round of daily duties. It helps him, perhaps, though it gets upon the
nerves of other people, making the younger nurses, not unmindful of his
arbitrary action in the matter of the violet powder, want to shriek.

"The Military Executive would be perfectly welcome to take me out and
shoot me, if first I might be permitted to look in at Staff Bomb proof
South, and render Society the distinguished service of ridding it of Lord
Beauvayse. Who's there?"

Saxham reopens the door, at which the nurse, now returned, has knocked.
The tired but cheerful-faced young woman, in an unstarched cap and apron,
and rumpled gown of Galatea cotton-twill, informs the Doctor that they
have telephoned up from Staff Bomb proof South Lines, and that the
password for the day is "Honour."

"You are going to him now?" asks the Chaplain anxiously and
apprehensively.

"Oddly enough, I have been sent for to attend to a shell casualty," says
Saxham, picking up and putting on his Service felt, and moving to take
down the canvas wallet that is his inseparable companion, from the hook on
which it hangs. "Or, rather, Taggart was; and as he has thirty diphtheria
cases for tracheotomy at the Children's Hospital, and McFadyen's hands are
full at the Refugees' Infirmary, the Major a