two
hospital surgeons, by this time worn out, accepted the offer and
withdrew. No one thought of me.

I understand that about an hour later as I sat waiting for orders on
the edge of an unoccupied bed (from which a dead man had been carried
out a little before midnight) I must have dropped across it in a
sleep of utter exhaustion. It appears too that the young doctor,
finding me there a short while after, carried me out and laid me on
the ground with my head against the hut. He never admitted this: for
I had been attending upon him, off and on, since his arrival, and
that he failed to recognise me might have been awkwardly accounted
for. But I cannot believe (as certainly I do not remember) that of
my own motion I crawled outside the hut and stretched myself on the
frozen ground, or that, exhausted as I was, I could have walked ten
yards in my sleep.

At all events, the chill of the bitter dawn awoke me there; and with
a yawn I stretched out both arms. My right hand encountered--what?--
the body of a man stretched beside me! Still dazed and numb, I
rolled over to my elbow, raised myself a little and peered into his
face.

It was pinched and cold. Its eyes stared straight up at the dawn.
From it my gaze travelled slowly over the faces of three other men
laid out accurately alongside of him, feet to feet, head to head.

I sank back, not yet comprehending, gazed up at the grey sky for a
while, then slowly raised myself on my left elbow.

On that side lay a score of sleepers, all flat on their backs, and
all equally still. Then I understood and leapt up with a scream.
It was a line of corpses, and I had been laid out beside them for
burial at dawn.

A sleepy orderly--a friend of mine--poked his head out of the doorway
of the next hut. I pointed to the spot where I had been lying.

"They must ha' done it in the dark," he said, slowly regarding the
bodies.

I suppose that my story, spreading about the camp, at length
penetrated to headquarters: for on Christmas Day, a transport
arriving and landing some light guns and a detachment of artillery, I
was sent forward with them towards Villa del Ciervo on the left bank
of the Agueda, where, by all accounts, the 52nd were posted.

Our battery was but six light six-pounders; yet even with these we
moved over the frozen and slippery roads at a snail's pace, the men
tearing their boots to ribbons as they hung on to the drag-ropes--for
the artillery captain was a