ss:

"And now, before we leave this room, I must trouble you for that
promise--oath, if you feel it would be more in your line of business. I
don't possess a copy of the Scriptures, but I think that is a Crucifix
you wear upon your watch-chain?"

It is. And when the Reverend Julius has kissed the sacred symbol with
shaking lips, and taken the oath as Saxham dictates, his heart tattooing
furiously under the baggy khaki jacket, and an angry pulse beating in his
thin cheek, Saxham adds, with the flickering shadow of a smile, as he
opens the door, and signs to the Chaplain to pass out before him:

"You observe, I have turned the weapons of your profession against you.
Exactly as--replying to your question of a moment back with regard to
compelling--exactly as I intend to do in the case of Lord Beauvayse!"

He motions to the other to pass out before him, and locks the door upon
his stuffy little sanctum whose shelves are piled with a heterogeneous
confusion of tubes and bottles, books and instruments, specimens of
foodstuffs under the process of analysis for values, and carefully-sealed
watch-glasses containing choice cultures of deadly microbes in bouillon,
before he leads his way down the long corridor, where narrow pallets, upon
which sick men and boys are stretched, range along the walls upon either
hand, and the air is heavy with the taint of suppurating wounds, and the
hot, sickly breath of fever and malaria.

He walks quickly, his keen blue eyes glancing right and left with the
effect of carelessness, yet missing nothing. He stops, and loosens the
bandage, and relieves the swollen limb. He delays to kneel a moment beside
one low pillow, and turn gently to the light a face that is ghastly, with
its bristly beard and glassy, staring eyes, and its pallor that is of the
hue of old wax, and lay it gently back again as he beckons to the nurse to
bring the screens, and hide the Dead from the sight of the living.

He is in his element; salient and masterful and strong. But the haggard
eyes that turn upon him do not shine with gratitude. He has not reached
these hearts. They accuse him, quite unjustly, of a liking for cutting and
carving. They suspect him, quite correctly, of being in no hurry for the
ending of the siege. How should he be, when, these strenuous days once
over, he sees nothing before him but the murky blackness of the night out
of which he came, from which he has emerged for one brief draught of
renewed jo