fficer?"

"It was like this," the nurse explained, with her stolid yet kindly and
truthful look; "it was like this: Your cavalry and our cavalry fought.
That is the account we have, though it is not very clear. You were
getting the better of us, but our artillery came up and our Uhlans were
ordered to retreat. When they were safely out of the way, your lancers
were shelled. I think they were cut to pieces. Nobody on either side
could get at the dead and wounded for days. When they did go to help
the living, it was our Germans who went. Most of the English were
killed. You and the others who lived (unless a few escaped), were
brought to a hospital of ours, in the north of France. Our soldiers
would not do such a thing, so it must have been prowling
people--thieves--who stripped off your clothes. One reason why our
doctors thought you might be an officer, even before you spoke, was
because the little finger of your left hand had been partly cut off. It
had been done with a knife. That seemed as if you must have worn a
valuable ring, so tight it couldn't be got off in a hurry."

"My mother's ring," muttered the man. The words spoke themselves.
Again, it was not he who remembered, but something which seemed to be
separate and independent, hiding inside him, though not in his brain.
It knew all about him, but would not give up the secret. Impishly, it
threw out a sop of knowledge now and then, just as it pleased. The
nurse tried to encourage this Something to go on, but it would not be
coaxed. When she repeated the conversation to Schwarz afterwards,
however, he said, "That's encouraging. Don't press him too much. Let
body and brain recover tone. Then we'll try more suggestions. It's the
most interesting case we've had. What is it to me that he's friend or
enemy? Nothing. He's a man. I shall think of a way to set up the right
vibrations."

The way he thought of was to commandeer a bundle of English papers
which had been passing from hand to hand in Brussels. These papers had
been smuggled into the town by a German who had escaped from a
concentration camp in England. He was a doctor, and had got into
Belgium through Holland. Such newspapers as he had were very old ones,
but that did not matter, because the man in whom Schwarz, the surgeon,
was interested had lost touch with the world since a day soon after the
breaking out of war. He must have been among the first troops sent over
from England to France, and rushed straig