tesquely
smiling eyes peered out at me. Those eyes inspected me from head to foot
and then, apparently satisfied, they twinkled and the wicket closed with
a snap. Then the door opened and out stepped a quaint and curious figure
with gnarled limbs and arms and a peculiar misshapen head, completely
covered with a short growth of black hair.

I laughed outright, laughed hilariously. I recognised the man. The last
time I had seen him was when he stepped out of a gas tank on the 18th
floor of an office building in Chicago where I was reclining at the time
in a dentist chair. He was the little gas demon who walked with me
through the Elysian fields the last time I had a tooth pulled.

"Well you poor little son-of-a-gun," I said, by way of greeting. "What
are you doing way over here in France? I haven't seen you for almost
two years, since that day back in Chicago."

The gas demon rolled his head from one side to the other and smiled, but
I can't remember what he said. My mental note-taking concluded about
there because the next memory I have is of complete darkness, and lying
on my back in a cramped position while a horse trampled on my left arm.

"Back off of there," I shouted, but the animal's hoofs didn't move. The
only effect my shouting had was to bring a soft hand into my right one,
and a sweet voice close beside me.

"You're all right, now," said the sweet voice, "just try to take a
little nap and you'll feel better."

Then I knew it was all over, that is, the operation was over, or
something was over. Anyhow my mind was working and I was in a position
where I wanted to know things again. I recall now, with a smile, that
the first things that passed through my mind were the threadbare
bromides so often quoted "Where am I?" I recall feeling the urge to say
something at least original, so I enquired:

"What place is this, and will you please tell me what day and time it
is?"

"This is the Military Base Hospital at Neuilly-sur-Seine just on the
outskirts of Paris, and it is about eleven o'clock in the morning and
to-day is Friday, June the seventh."

Then I went back to sleep with an etherised taste in my mouth like a
motorman's glove.

CHAPTER XVIII

GROANS, LAUGHS AND SOBS IN THE HOSPITAL

There were fourteen wounded American soldiers in my ward--all men from
the ranks and representing almost as many nationalistic extractions.
There was an Irishman, a Swede, an Italian, a Jew, a Pole, one man of