etic women, and a little group of men bundling a slender yet
vigorously protesting form in a snow drift, where one or two others were
being rolled and buffeted; while others still, with a keening Irishman
in their grasp, were lugging him back to hospital; while Corporal
Cassidy, with his hair singed close to his head, his face and hands
seared and his clothing soaked, smoking, and a general wreck, was
striving to evade his handlers and stand attention to the colonel, who
for his part was bending over Bob Lanier just emerging from his third
involuntary plunge in the drifts, and sputtering objurgations on his
would-be benefactors.

"In God's name, Lanier," almost wailed the colonel, as at last that
young gentleman, likewise singed and scorched and soaked and dripping,
yet preternaturally cool for one just out of a blazing hell, found his
feet and faced his commander--"in God's name, why didn't you jump when
they told you? There was nothing but snowdrifts below----"

"There was a colonel coming," said Bob, with a grin of mingled anguish
and satisfaction, "who held _that_ sort of thing to be breach of
arrest."

IX

Few men slept the rest of the night for talking over the stirring scenes
of that spectacular fire. Indeed, there had been a strenuous fight to
keep it from spreading, and the Graysons' quarters next door were badly
scorched, and the Graysons woefully scared, before the little bachelor
hall had burned itself out. Big Jim Ennis had lost pretty much
everything he owned except what he had on. Lanier was not much better
off. As to the origin of the fire, Bob merely said that he had turned
the lights low in the sitting-room, and, obedient to "Shoe's" orders,
had gone up to his roost, too wrathful and amazed over what had occurred
even to think of sleep--to think, in fact, of anything but the colonel's
words. So absorbed was he, as he slowly undressed, he never noted the
sounds from below until his room of a sudden seemed filled with smoke,
and, throwing open the door, he was amazed to find the hallway ablaze,
the stairs impassable. Running to his dormer window, he yelled fire at
the top of his voice. Sentry Number Five heard and came running down
along the back fence; saw the peril, let drive a shot and gave the yell
that roused every one at the hospital--poor Rafferty, half crazed, half
dazed, and by no means half dressed, coming leaping along among the
first.

And there at his back window, choking with