d of reason and
sanity won back.

"And you?" I questioned, "have you done many such wonders?"

"Few!" he answered, and sighed. "You see, my duties now are chiefly
administrative," and he seemed gently grieved that it should be so.

He brought us into wards, long, airy and many-windowed, places of
exquisite neatness and order, where calm-faced sisters were busied,
and smart, soft-treading orderlies came and went. Here in white cots
lay many bandaged forms, some who, propped on pillows, watched us
bright-eyed and nodded in cheery greeting; others who lay so
ominously still.

But as I passed between the long rows of cots, I was struck with the
look of utter peace and content on so many of the faces and wondered,
until, remembering the hell whence they had so lately come, I thought
I understood. Thus, bethinking me of how these dire hurts had been
come by, I took off my hat, and trod between these beds of silent
suffering as softly as I could, for these men had surely come "out of
great tribulation."

In another ward I saw numbers of German wounded, most of them
bearded; many there were who seemed weakly and undersized, and among
them were many grey heads, a very motley company. These, the Colonel
informed us, received precisely the same treatment as our own
wounded, even to tobacco and cigarettes.

We followed our soft-voiced conductor through many other wards where
he showed us strange and wondrous devices in splints; he halted us by
hanging beds of weird shape and cots that swung on pulleys; he
descanted on wounds to flesh and bone and brain, of lives snatched
from the grip of Death by the marvels of up-to-date surgery, and as I
listened to his pleasant voice I sensed much of the grim wonders he
left untold. We visited X-ray rooms and operating theatre against
whose walls were glass cases filled with a multitudinous array of
instruments for the saving of life, and here it was I learned that in
certain cases, a chisel, properly handled, was a far more delicate
tool than the finest saw.

"A wonderful place," said I for the hundredth time as we stepped out
upon a trim, green lawn. The Colonel-Surgeon smiled.

"It took some planning," he admitted, "a little while ago it was a
sandy wilderness."

"But these lawns?" I demurred.

"Came to me of their own accord," he answered. "At least, the seed
did, washed ashore from a wreck, so I had it planted and it has done
rather well. Now, what else can I show you? It woul