roar of machinery, "I had two boys
at the front, but--they're a-laying out there somewhere, killed by
the same shell. I've got a photo of their graves--very neat they
look, though bare, and I'll never be able to go and tend 'em,
y'see--nor lay a few flowers on 'em. So I'm doin' this instead--to
help the other lads. Yes, sir, my boys did their bit, and now they're
gone their mother's tryin' to do hers."

Thus I stood and talked with this sad-eyed, white-haired woman who
had cast off selfish grief to aid the Empire, and in her I saluted
the spirit of noble motherhood ere I turned and went my way.

But now I woke to the fact that my companions had vanished utterly;
lost, but nothing abashed, I rambled on between long alleys of
clattering machines, which in their many functions seemed in
themselves almost human, pausing now and then to watch and wonder and
exchange a word with one or other of the many workers, until a kindly
works-manager found me and led me unerringly through that riotous
jungle of machinery.

He brought me by devious ways to a place he called "holy
ground"--long, low outbuildings approached by narrow, wooden
causeways, swept and re-swept by men shod in felt--a place this,
where no dust or grit might be, for here was the magazine, with the
filling sheds beyond. And within these long sheds, each seated behind
a screen, were women who handled and cut deadly cordite into needful
lengths as if it had been so much ribbon, and always and everywhere
the same dexterous speed.

He led me, this soft-voiced, keen-eyed works-manager, through
well-fitted wards and dispensaries, redolent of clean, druggy smells
and the pervading odour of iodoform; he ushered me through dining
halls long and wide and lofty and lighted by many windows, where
countless dinners were served at a trifling cost per head; and so at
last out upon a pleasant green, beyond which rose the great gates
where stood the cars that were to bear my companions and myself upon
our way.

"They seem to work very hard!" said I, turning to glance back whence
we had come, "they seem very much in earnest."

"Yes," said my companion, "every week we are turning out--" here he
named very many millions--"of cartridges."

"To be sure they are earning good money!" said I thoughtfully.

"More than many of them ever dreamed of earning," answered the
works-manager. "And yet--I don't know, but I don't think it is
altogether the money, somehow."

"I'm glad to h