sounded
from afar and he could scarcely feel the pressure of the corporal's
arm. He submitted passively to the latter's directing strength. His
head was in the old manner hanging forward upon his breast. His knees
wobbled.

The corporal led him into the glare of the fire. "Now, Henry," he
said, "let's have look at yer ol' head."

The youth sat obediently and the corporal, laying aside his rifle,
began to fumble in the bushy hair of his comrade. He was obliged to
turn the other's head so that the full flush of the fire light would
beam upon it. He puckered his mouth with a critical air. He drew back
his lips and whistled through his teeth when his fingers came in
contact with the splashed blood and the rare wound.

"Ah, here we are!" he said. He awkwardly made further investigations.
"Jest as I thought," he added, presently. "Yeh've been grazed by a
ball. It's raised a queer lump jest as if some feller had lammed yeh
on th' head with a club. It stopped a-bleedin' long time ago. Th'
most about it is that in th' mornin' yeh'll fell that a number ten hat
wouldn't fit yeh. An' your head'll be all het up an' feel as dry as
burnt pork. An' yeh may git a lot 'a other sicknesses, too, by
mornin'. Yeh can't never tell. Still, I don't much think so. It's
jest a damn' good belt on th' head, an' nothin' more. Now, you jest
sit here an' don't move, while I go rout out th' relief. Then I'll
send Wilson t' take keer 'a yeh."

The corporal went away. The youth remained on the ground like a
parcel. He stared with a vacant look into the fire.

After a time he aroused, for some part, and the things about him began
to take form. He saw that the ground in the deep shadows was cluttered
with men, sprawling in every conceivable posture. Glancing narrowly
into the more distant darkness, he caught occasional glimpses of
visages that loomed pallid and ghostly, lit with a phosphorescent glow.
These faces expressed in their lines the deep stupor of the tired
soldiers. They made them appear like men drunk with wine. This bit of
forest might have appeared to an ethereal wanderer as a scene of the
result of some frightful debauch.

On the other side of the fire the youth observed an officer asleep,
seated bolt upright, with his back against a tree. There was something
perilous in his position. Badgered by dreams, perhaps, he swayed with
little bounces and starts, like an old, toddy-stricken grandfather in a
chimney c