rough
the biceps muscle of his left arm. He was pale and weak.

"How long have you been like this?" asked the girl.

"Since four o'clock, yesterday," he whispered.

"Thirty hours," said Hilda.

Dr. McDonnell made a request to the officer for help. He gave four men
and two stretchers. They put the boy and one of the men on the
stretchers, and hoisted them through the cellar window. Woffington and
McDonnell took the lantern and searched till they found a wheelbarrow.
The third man, wounded in the shoulder, threw an arm over Dr. McDonnell,
and Woffington steadied him at the waist. He stumbled up the steps, and
collapsed into the barrow.

Woffington and the Doctor took turns in wheeling him through the mud.
Hilda walked at their side. The wheel bit deeply into the road under
the weight. They had to spell each other, frequently. After a few
hundred yards, they met a small detachment of cavalry, advancing toward
the house. The horses seemed to feel the tension, and shared in the
silence of their drivers, stepping noiselessly through the murk.
Woffington was forced to turn the barrow into the ditch. It required the
strength of the two men, one at each handle, to shove it out on the road
again.

The stretchers had reached the ambulance ahead of the wheelbarrow. They
loaded the car hastily--there was no time to swing stretchers. They put
the three wounded in on the long wooden seat. The boy with the torn
biceps fainted on Hilda's shoulder. She rode in with him. At Hoogar
dressing-station, she asked the military doctor for water for the boy.
He had come to, and kept whispering--"Water, water."

"I have no water for you," said the Doctor.

A soldier followed her back to the car and gave the lad to drink from
his bottle. There was only a swallow in it.

When they reached the Convent, the officer in charge came running out.

"I'll take this load, but that's all," he said. "Can't take any more,
full up. Next trip, go on into the town, to Military Hospital Number
Three."

They started back toward the wood.

"I've only got petrol enough for one trip, and then home again," said
Woffington.

"All the way, then," said the Doctor, "out to the farthest trenches.
We'll make a clean sweep."

They shot past Hoogar, and out through the wood, and on to the trenches
of the Cheshires. Just back of the mounded earth, the reserves were
sleeping in the mud of the road, and on the wet bank of the ditch. The
night was dark and silent