d on a pole by one of the relatives of the
deceased. Father Noah, with the long ends of his dirty grey beard raggedly
bannering in the dust-wind, was still waiting for the bearers of the
hastily improvised stretcher of sticks and green reims, as Saxham, having
obtained a strip of black cloth with a needle and thread from the Matron,
pulled off his jacket and sat down upon the end of the cot-bed in his
little room, and neatly tacked a mourning-band upon the upper part of the
left sleeve.

It was his nature to absorb himself in whatever work he undertook. As he
stitched, the crowded Hospital buzzed about him like a hive, the moans of
sick men and the rattling breaths of the dying beat in waves of sound
upon his brain, for the long rows of beds stood upon either side of the
corridors now, with barely a foot of room between them. In the necessarily
open space before the Doctor's door a woman's hurrying footsteps paused,
there came a rustling, and a sheet of printed paper folded in half was
thrust underneath.

"The _Siege Gazette_, Doctor," called the Matron's pleasant womanly voice,
as, simultaneously with the utterance of Saxham's brief word of thanks,
she passed on. In the famine for news that possessed him, as every other
human being in the town, the sight of the little badly-printed sheet was
welcome, although it could hardly contain anything to satisfy his need. He
set the last stitches, fastened and cut the thread, reached down a long
arm from the foot of the bed, and took up the paper.

The Latest Information had whiskers. The General Orders announced an issue
of paper currency in small amounts, owing to the deplorable shortage of
silver, congratulated those N.C.O.'s and men of the Baraland Irregulars
who, under Lieutenant Byass, occupying the advanced Nordenfeldt position,
had brought so effective a fire to bear upon the enemy's big gun that
Meisje had been compelled to abandon her commanding position, and take up
her quarters in a spot less advantageous, from the enemy's point of view.
A reduction in the Forage ration was hinted at, and a string of Social
Jottings followed, rows of asterisks exploding like squibs under every
paragraphic utterance of the Gold Pen.

Not for nothing had Captain Bingo dolefully boasted that his wife exuded
Journalese from her very finger-ends. Saxham recognised in the style, the
very table-Moselle of Fashionable Journalism. So like the genuine article
in the shape of the bottle, the