ode. Their little barrel of water, swinging between the wheels, had
long ago gone to fevered men.

"First ambulance I've seen in twenty-four hours," said Captain Davies,
as he came on them out of the dusk of Hoogar wood. The stern and
unbending organization of the military had found it necessary to hold a
hundred or more ambulances of the Royal Army Medical Corps in readiness
all day in the market place of Ypres against a sudden evacuation. So
there were simply no cars, but their one car, to speed out to the front
and gather the wounded.

It was strange, in the evening light, to work out along the road between
lines of poplar trees. Dim forms kept passing them--two by two, each
couple with a stretcher and its burden. An old farm cart came jogging
by, wrenching its body from side to side as it struck invisible hummocks
and dipped into shell holes. It was loaded with outstretched forms of
men, whose wounds were torn at by the jerking of the cart. In companies,
fresh men, talking in whispers, were softly padding along the road on
their way to the trenches, to relieve the staled fighters. The wide
silence was only broken by the occasional sharp clatter and ping of some
lonely sniper's rifle.

It was ten o'clock of the evening, and the ambulance had gone out one
mile beyond the hamlet of Hoogar. The Doctor and Hilda alighted at the
thick wood, which had been hotly contended for, through the seven days.
It had been covered with shell fire as thoroughly as a fishing-net rakes
a stream. They waited for Woffington to turn the car around. It is wise
to leave a car headed in the direction of safety, when one is treading
on disputed ground.

A man stepped out of the wood.

"Are you Red Cross?" he asked.

"Yes," said Dr. McDonnell, "and we have our motor ambulance here."

"Good!" answered the stranger. "We have some wounded men in the Chateau
at the other side of the wood. Come with me."

"How far?" asked Hilda.

"Oh, not more than half a mile."

They seeped along over the wet wood road, speaking not at all, as
snipers were scattered by night here and there in the trees. They came
to the old white building, a country house of size and beauty. In the
cellar, three soldiers were lying on straw. Two of them told Hilda they
had been lying wounded and uncared for in the trenches since evening of
the night before. They had just been brought to the house. She went
over to the third, a boy of about eighteen years. He was shot th