ts slow, wandering movements, and long, thin fingers. That wambling,
independent form might surely be seen any day outside a thousand British
public-houses, in time of peace. His face, with its dust-coloured hair,
projecting ears, grey eyes with something of the child in them, and
something of the mule, and something of a soul trying to wander out of
the forest of misfortune; his little, tip-tilted nose that never grew on
pure-blooded Frenchman; under a scant moustache his thick lips,
disfigured by infirmity of speech, whence passed so continually a
dribble of saliva--sick British workman was stamped on him. Yet he was
passionately fond of washing himself; his teeth, his head, his clothes.
Into the frigid winter he would go, and stand at the '_Source_' half an
hour at a time, washing and washing. It was a cause of constant
irritation to Mignan that his '_phenomene_' would never come to time, on
account of this disastrous habit; the hospital corridors resounded
almost daily with the importuning of those shapeless lips for something
clean--a shirt, a pair of drawers, a bath, a handkerchief. He had a
fixity of purpose; not too much purpose, but so fixed.--Yes, he was
English!

For '_les deux phenomenes_' the soldiers, the servants, and the 'Powers'
of the hospital--all were sorry; yet they could not understand to the
point of quite forgiving their vagaries. The twain were outcast,
wandering each in a dumb world of his own, each in the endless circle of
one or two hopeless notions. It was irony--or the French system--which
had ordered the Breton Roche to get well in a place whence he could see
nothing flatter than a mountain, smell no sea, eat no fish. And God
knows what had sent Gray there. His story was too vaguely understood,
for his stumbling speech simply could not make it plain. '_Les
Boches--ils vont en payer cher--les Boches_,' muttered fifty times a
day, was the burden of his song. Those Boches had come into his village
early in the war, torn him from his wife and his '_petite fille_.' Since
then he had 'had fear,' been hungry, been cold, eaten grass; eyeing some
fat little dog, he would leer and mutter: '_J'ai mange cela, c'est
bon!_' and with fierce triumph add: '_Ils ont faim, les Boches!_' The
'arrogant civilian' had never done his military service, for his
infirmity, it seemed, had begun before the war.

Dumb, each in his own way, and differing in every mortal thing except
the reality of their misfortunes, ne