not think he ever altered his perfectly just opinion
of me. But in the end, and long before the end, he did all he could
to help me.

The worst of all the snubs waited me in Marlborough Camp, and came
from a lady worker, afterwards the dearest and most valued of the
many friends I made in France. I shall not soon forget the day I
first entered her canteen. She and her fellow-worker, also a valued
friend now, did not call me a "---- parson"; but they left me under
the impression that I was not wanted there. Her snub, delivered as a
lady delivers such things, was the worst of the three.

For my reception in the Stretcher-bearers' Camp I was prepared.

"You'll find those fellows a pretty tough crowd," so some one warned
me.

"Those old boys are bad lots," said some one else. "You'll not do any
good with them."

I agree with the "tough." I totally disagree with the "bad." Even if,
after eight months, I had been bidden farewell in the same phrase
with which I was greeted, I should still refuse to say "bad lot"
about those men. I hope that in such a case I should have the grace
to recognise the failure as my fault, not theirs, and to take the
"bad lot" as a description of myself.

The Emergency Stretcher-bearers when I first knew them were no man's
children. The Red Cross flag flew over the entrance of their camp,
but the Red Cross people accepted no responsibility for them. Their
recreation room, which was not a room at all, but one end of their
gaunt dining-room, was ill supplied with books and games, and had no
papers. There were no lady workers in or near the camp, and only
those who have seen the work which our ladies do in canteens in
France can realise how great the loss was. There was no kind of unity
in the camp.

It was a small place. There were not more than three hundred men
altogether. But they were men from all sorts of regiments. I think
that when I knew the camp first, nearly every one in it belonged to
the old army. They were gathered there, the salvage of the Mons
retreat, of the Marne, of the glorious first battle of Ypres, broken
men every one of them, debris tossed by the swirling currents of war
into this backwater.

Their work was heavy, thankless, and uninspiring. They were camped on
a hill. Day after day they marched down through the streets of the
town to the railway station or the quay. They carried the wounded on
stretchers from the hospital trains to the Red Cross ambulances; or
after