n anyways decent legs an'
considerate o' the kindness I've always shown them, wouldn't they have
quit pestherin' me when they took Dutch leave?"

"Stop moralizin'," shouted Johnnie O'Neil, the piper from Antrim. "Get
down to the p'int o' your tale."

"It hasn't any point: it's flat," growled the lance-corporal.

Unembarrassed, Patsy MacLean went on: "I was a-thinkin' this all over
again last night, a-listenin' to the ambulances comin' in, when a breath
o' wind pushes the door open a bit, an' in walks, as natural as life, the
ghost o' them two legs. 'Tis the gospel truth I'm tellin' ye. They walked
a bit bowlegged, same as they always did, straight through the door an'
down the ward. An' the queer thing is they never stopped by Larry's cot or
Casey Ryan's--the heathen!--but came right on to me."

"Faith, they wouldn't have had the nerve to stop. The leg Casey lost was
as straight as a hazel wand, same as mine." Larry snorted contemptuously.

"The two of yez are jealous." Patsy lowered his voice to a mock whisper
and confided to the chief and Sheila, "They know they'll have to be buyin'
a good pair o' shoes an' throwin' the odd away, while I'll be savin'
enough from the shoes I'll never have to be buyin' to keep mysel' in
cigars for the rest o' my life."

"But Patsy's wondtherin' can ye lay the ghost, miss?" Timothy Brennan, who
had lost the "cream of his face," repeated the question Larry had asked a
half-hour before. The rest of the ward tittered expectantly.

"Let me see--" The Irish blood in her steadied the nurse's hands, while
she drew her lips into quizzical solemnity and winked at Culmullen over
her shoulder. "I always thought it was restlessness that sent ghosts
walking. Maybe these have come back, looking for their boots."

The titter broke into a roar of delight. "Thrue for ye!" shouted
Parley-voo Flynn, pounding the arm of Jamie's chair with his one fist.
"All ye've got to do, Patsy, is to be puttin' your boots beside your chair
onct more, an' them legs will scrooch comfortably into them an' never
haunt ye again. The lass is right, isn't she, Jamie?"

Eleven pairs of eyes and an odd one shifted apprehensively from the lad
who was being dressed to the lad in the wheel-chair, and the eyes all
showed varying degrees of trouble, uncertainty, and sorrow. They had a way
of searching Jamie out in this fashion many times a day, while he sat very
still, with eyes bandaged and lips that never flinched but never