e Colonel, descending from the ladder
and sticking his long scissors like a dagger through the bottom
button-hole of his coat. "Then we must play the part of surgeon, my
boy. Not the first time, Joe. Clap the lid on the tank."

The wooden cover was placed upon the galvanised-iron soft-water tank,
and poor Grip, who looked wistfully up in the Colonel's eyes, was lifted
out and laid carefully upon the top, while the Colonel took off his coat
and turned up his sleeves in the most business-like manner.

"I remember out at Bongay Wandoon, boys, after a sharp fight with a lot
of fanatical Ghazis, who came up as I was alone with my company, we had
ten poor fellows cut and hacked about and no surgeon within a couple of
hundred miles, which meant up there in the mountains at least a week
before we could get help. It was all so unexpected, no fighting being
supposed to be possible, that I was regularly taken by surprise when the
wretches had been driven off, and I found myself there with the ten poor
fellows on my hands. I was only a young captain then, and I felt
regularly knocked over; but, fortunately, I'd a good sergeant, and we
went over to my lieutenant, who had been one of the first to go down.
But he wouldn't have a cut touched till the men had been seen to. I'm
afraid my surgery was a very bungling affair, but the sergeant and I did
our best, and we didn't lose a patient. Our surgeon made sad fun of it
all when he saw what we had done, and he snarled and found fault, and
abused me to his heart's content; but some time after he came and begged
my pardon, and shook hands, and asked me to let him show me all he could
in case I should ever be in such a fix again. Consequently, I often
used to go and help him when we had men cut down. I liked learning, and
it pleased the men, too, and taught me skill. Poor old dog, then; no
snapping. The poor fellow's legs are regularly crushed, as if he had
been hit with an iron bar used like a scythe."

"Crushed in the man-engine, father," said Gwyn.

"Ah, yes, that must have done it. Well, Gwyn, my boy, a doctor would
say here in a case like this--`amputation. I can't save the limbs.'"

"Oh, father, it is so horrible!"

"Yes, my boy, but you want to save the poor fellow's life."

"Can't anything be done, sir?" said Joe.

"Humph! Well, we might try," said the Colonel, as he tenderly
manipulated the dog's legs, the animal only whining softly, and seeming
to understand t