work. It was a most trying ordeal,
because the buildings were of pine, close together, and a direct hit
probably would have started a fire which would have burned the wounded
as they lay.

[Sidenote: The sound of battle draws near.]

About half past one I went up to our mess and crawled into an empty bed.
The next morning when I awakened it was to the sound of distant cannon.
This meant that the battle was drawing nearer.

[Sidenote: A ride on an ambulance.]

An especially hard day kept me on the strain from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and
when I returned to the mess I found no dinner and no servants. Our
directrice, anticipating evacuation, had dismissed them. Only a little
Belgian refugee, a sort of "slavey," hung on, because she had no other
place to go. Tired out, I managed to make an omelet and a cup of tea,
and to fry some griddle cakes to replace the bread which was conspicuous
by its absence. Then I stationed myself in front of the canteen hoping
to flag a passing ambulance. An American driver stopped his car, and a
Frenchman, who was beside him on the front seat, jumped down to help me
up. This man had a bandage around his throat, and when I asked him if he
was wounded, he made a hissing sound in reply. The American driver
explained that he could not speak because he had a bullet through his
windpipe. There were six badly wounded men on the stretchers inside, but
we heard not a sound from them.

[Sidenote: A night of horrors.]

I shall not soon forget that night I had steeled myself to meet horrors,
and knew that I _must not_ let them affect me. Yet in spite of terrible
wounds, there was little sound of suffering. The place was wonderfully
quiet.

When I got inside of the receiving room, a group of our women who had
been at work all afternoon were still moving about, white and
hollow-eyed with fatigue. A French doctor asked if I could not bring
some food there from the canteen. It was Thursday. Some of the men had
been wounded on Tuesday, and had had no food and little water.

[Sidenote: Bringing up food for the wounded.]

I found an English girl with an empty ambulance, who risked a reprimand
for leaving without orders, and we flashed back to the canteen, and
loaded up with twenty gallons of hot chocolate, bread, about three
hundred hard boiled eggs, some kilos of chocolate, and raw eggs and
sugar. We flew back to the hospital; but there was a big convoy of
ambulances just in, so that we could not get up to t