an end, the fighting
in West Flanders was by no means over. All along the line fierce and
relentless war waged without interruption and if neither side could
claim victory, neither side suffered defeat. Day after day hundreds of
combatants fell; hundreds of disabled limped to the rear; hundreds were
made prisoners. And always a stream of reinforcements came to take the
places of the missing ones. Towns were occupied to-day by the Germans,
to-morrow by the Allies; from Nieuport on past Dixmude and beyond Ypres
the dykes had been opened and the low country was one vast lake. The
only approaches from French territory were half a dozen roads built high
above the water line, which rendered them capable of stubborn defence.

Dunkirk was thronged with reserves--English, Belgian and French. The
Turcos and East Indians were employed by the British in this section and
were as much dreaded by the civilians as the enemy. Uncle John noticed
that military discipline was not so strict in Dunkirk as at Ostend; but
the Germans had but one people to control while the French town was host
to many nations and races.

Strange as it may appear, the war was growing monotonous to those who
were able to view it closely, perhaps because nothing important resulted
from all the desperate, continuous fighting. The people were pursuing
their accustomed vocations while shells burst and bullets whizzed around
them. They must manage to live, whatever the outcome of this struggle of
nations might be.

Aboard the American hospital ship there was as yet no sense of monotony.
The three girls who had conceived and carried out this remarkable
philanthropy were as busy as bees during all their waking hours and the
spirit of helpful charity so strongly possessed them that all their
thoughts were centered on their work. No two cases were exactly alike
and it was interesting, to the verge of fascination, to watch the
results of various treatments of divers wounds and afflictions.

The girls often congratulated themselves on having secured so efficient
a surgeon as Doctor Gys, who gloried in his work, and whose judgment,
based on practical experience, was comprehensive and unfailing. The
man's horribly contorted features had now become so familiar to the
girls that they seldom noticed them--unless a cry of fear from some
newly arrived and unnerved patient reminded them that the doctor was
exceedingly repulsive to strangers.

No one recognized this grotesque