e any change for the worse; and
after this I cannot trust you. Now I must stay here. Do you think I am
going to lose my investment in you? Do you suppose I would work over you
as I have been doing, and then drop you for fear of a little more work?"

As I passed to the kitchen I found that blue lips and pinched noses had
suddenly come into fashion; that there were more of them than I had time
to count; but did not, for a moment, dream of letting a man get into the
graveyard by that gate.

The merry, young Irishman who had volunteered as my orderly, had a
period of active service; and no more willing pair of hands and feet
ever were interposed between men and death. Hot bricks, hot blankets,
bottles of hot water, hot whisky punch and green tea were the order of
the forenoon, and of a good many hours of night and day after it; for
that victory was won by a long struggle. For ten nights I never lay down
in my room; but slept, all I did sleep, lying on a cot about the center
of Ward Four, and two cots from the man minus a bone. I could drop
asleep in an instant, and sleep during ordinary movements; but a change
in a voice brought me to my post in a moment. I could command anything
in the dispensary or store-rooms at any hour of the day or night, and
carried many a man through the crisis of a night attack, when if he had
been left until discovered in the morning, there would have been little
hope for him; and when a surgeon could have done nothing without a key
to the kitchen which none of them had.

I kept no secrets from any of them: told each one just what I had done
in his ward; thankfully received his approval and directions, asked
about things I did not understand, and was careful that my nursing was
in harmony with his surgery.

During that trial-time there was one night that death seemed to be
gaining the victory in Corporal Kendall's case. Pain defied my utmost
efforts and held the citadel. Sleep fled; the circulation grew sluggish,
and both he and I knew that the result hung on the hour. It was two
o'clock A.M., and from midnight I had been trying to bring rest. The
injured limb was suspended in a zinc trough. I had raised, lowered it by
imperceptible motions; cut bandage where it seemed to bind, tucked in
bits of cotton or oakum, kept the toes in motion, irritated the surface
wherever I could get the point of a finger in through the bandages; kept
up the heat of the body, and the hope of the soul; and sat down t