in the compass.

The little corral in which we were allowed to walk had a barbed-wire
fence around it--a good one, too, eight strands, and close together.
One side of the corral was a high wall, and in the enclosure on the
other side of the wall were the lung patients.

One afternoon I saw a young Canadian boy looking wistfully through
the gate, and I went over and spoke to him. He was the only one who
could speak English among the "lungers." The others were Russians,
French, and Belgians. The boy was dying of loneliness as well as
consumption. He came from Ontario, though I forget the name of the
town.

"Do you think it will be over soon?" he asked me eagerly. "Gee, I'm
sick of it--and wish I could get home. Last night I dreamed about
going home. I walked right in on them--dirt and all--with this
tattered old tunic--and a dirty face. Say, it didn't matter--my
mother just grabbed me--and it was dinner-time--they were eating
turkey--a great big gobbler, all brown--and steaming hot--and I sat
down in my old place--it was ready for me--and just began on a leg
of turkey..."

A spasm of coughing seized him, and he held to the bars of the gate
until it passed.

Then he went on: "Gee, it was great--it was all so clear. I can't
believe that I am not going! I think the war must be nearly over--"

Then the cough came again--that horrible, strangling cough--and I
knew that it would be only in his dreams that he would ever see his
home! For to him, at least, the war was nearly over, and the day of
peace at hand.

Before I left the lazaret, the smart-Alec young German doctor who had
made faces at the little bugler blew gaily in one day and breezed
around our beds, making pert remarks to all of us. I knew him the
minute he came in the door, and was ready for him when he passed my
bed.

He stopped and looked at me, and made some insulting remark about
my beard, which was, I suppose, quite a sight, after a month of
uninterrupted growth. Then he began to make faces at me.

I raised myself on my elbow, and regarded him with the icy composure
of an English butler. Scorn and contempt were in my glance, as much
as I could put in; for I realized that it was hard for me to look
dignified and imposing, in a hospital pajama suit of dirt-colored
flannelette, with long wisps of amber-colored hair falling around
my face, and a thick red beard long enough now to curl back like a
drake's tail.

I knew I looked like a valentine, but my