"If you haven't had enough
slaughter for one while, I have. Good-by."

As they waved them off, the muddy column of the first company swung down
the street. It was even as they had thought--wounded were with them, and
the nurse and surgeon hurried inside to make ready. The day wound itself
out in an almost ludicrous repetition of events. Straggling companies fell
back, dropped their wounded, and went on; a few ambulances made the town,
gathered up the worst cases, and went back. Desultory shells picked off
their belfry, smashed a group of monuments in the cemetery, and wiped out
a street of houses not far away. And every half-hour or so came the orders
to evacuate at once. Regiment after regiment fell back through the city;
the rest of the division must have passed to north and south of it. By
nightfall nearly all had passed and the town was left like a delta between
two dividing currents.

"They'll begin shelling in earnest by midnight. We'll get barrages from
both sides. We won't know it, but this town's going to be wiped off the
map to-night." The chief said it in his most matter-of-fact voice, but his
face showed gray.

The girl hushed him. "The boys might hear, and they've been through so
much. There's no harm in letting them hope." She turned back to the
emergency kettle she was stirring. They were making cocoa and feeding the
boys out of the chalice-cups from the altar. To the nurse it seemed like
passing the last communion, and though her hands kept steady, her heart
seemed drained.

Out of the noise and the gathering gloom outside came two more
stretcher-loads. The bearers whistled when they saw the red cross on the
door. They whistled harder when they pushed it open and looked inside.
"Gee! we thought all you outfits had been ordered back!" The bearers laid
down their burden on a pew, and the fore one groaned out the words.

"We were," the chief spoke. "Sorry we didn't go?"

"Dunno. Bet these chaps wouldn't be, though--if they knew. Don't know
whether it's any use trying; they're all but gone, Doc." The speaker
jerked his head over his shoulder and thumbed a command to the other
bearers. "Here you, Jake! You and Fritzie hustle along with yours."

As the surgeon bent over to examine, the nurse stopped an instant to
listen, then went on feeding her boys.

"This one's French." The chief was looking over the first stretcher. "How
did you pick him up?"

"Got mixed up with a company of _poilus_ in the last