nce of
orders. No. 7, you refused to take your medicine yesterday. Steward,
double his prescription, and if he shows the least resistance to taking
it, have the nurses hold him and force it down his throat. Do you hear?
There, why don't you hold still?" (This to a man who was having a large
blister applied to his back.)

"It hurts so," answered the sufferer.

"Hurts, eh? Well, I'll show you what hurts some of these days, when I
cut your leg off. Well, what do you want, youngster?"

A slender, white-faced boy was standing at the foot of his cot, at
"attention," and saluting respectfully.

"If you please," said he, "I'd like to be discharged, and go back to my
company. I'm well enough now to do duty, and I'll be entirely well in a
short time, if I can get out of doors into the fresh air."

"Indeed," answered Dr. Moxon, with a sneer, "may I inquire when you
began to diagnose cases, and offer advice to your superior officers? Why
don't you set up in the practice of medicine at once, and apply for a
commission as Surgeon in the Army? Step back, an don't ever speak to me
again in this manner, or it'll be the worse for you, I can tell you.
I know when you are fit to go back to duty, and I won't have patients
annoying me with their whims and fancies. Step back, sir."

Thus he passed along, leaving anger and humiliation behind him, as a
steamer leaves a wake of waves beaten into a froth.

"Old Sawbones made a mistake with his morning cocktail, and mixed a lot
of wormwood with it," said one of the "convalescents," in an undertone
to those about him.

"This awful hot weather's spilin' most everything," said another, "and
the old man's temper never was any too sweet."

Dr. Moxon came up to Rachel, and regarded her for an instant very
unpleasantly. "Young woman," he said in a harsh tone and with a still
harsher manner, "the rules of this institution require every attendant
to be present at morning roll-call, under pain of punishment. You were
not present this morning, but be careful that you are in the future."

Rachel's grief over her own situation had been swallowed up by
indignation at the Surgeon's brutality to others. All her higher
instincts were on fire at the gratuitous insults to boys, toward whom
her womanly sympathies streamed out. The pugnacious element, large in
hers as in all strong natures, asserted itself and invited to the fray.
If there was no one else to resist this petty tyrant she would, and
mayhap i