d have occasion to discuss with our friends in France the
attitude of this nation toward the war, you may say that it is my
opinion that the conscience of the country is now awake, and that
before long we shall be shoulder to shoulder with them in the
destruction of barbarism."

CHAPTER XIV

For twenty-five years there has stood, in one of the faubourgs of
Rouen, not far from the right bank of the Seine, a long two-story
brick building, with a wing reaching back to the base of the hill. Up
to the year 1915 it was used as a factory for the making of silk
ribbons. Rouen had been a center of the cotton manufacturing industry
from time immemorial. Why therefore should not the making of silk be
added? It was added, and the enterprise grew and became prosperous.
Then came the war, vast, terrible, bringing in its train suffering,
poverty, a drastic curtailment of all the luxuries of life. Silk
ribbons are a luxury; they go with soft living. So, then; _voila
tout!_ Before the end of the first year of the conflict the factory
was transformed into a hospital. The clatter of looms and the chatter
of girls gave place to the moanings of sick and wounded men, and the
gentle voices of white and blue clad nurses. It was no longer bales
of raw silk that were carted up to the big doors of the factory, and
boxes of rolled ribbon that were trundled down the drive to the
street, to the warehouses, and thence to the admiring eyes of
beauty-loving women. The human freight that was brought to the big
doors in these days consisted of the pierced and mutilated bodies of
men; soldiers for whom the final taps would soon sound. If they
chanced to be of the British troops, and held fast to the spark of
life within them, then they were close enough to the seaport to be
taken across the channel for final convalescence under English skies.

It was to this hospital that Lieutenant Penfield Butler was brought
from the battlefield of the Somme. His battalion had done the work
assigned to it in the fight, had done it well, and had withdrawn to
its trenches, leaving a third of its men dead or wounded between the
lines. Later on, under cover of a galling artillery fire, rescue
parties had gone out to bring in the wounded. They had found Pen in
the shelter of the shell-hole, still unconscious. They had brought him
back across the fire-swept field, and down through the winding,
narrow trenches, to the first-aid station, from which, after a hurried