ht to the front.

For a few days he had been very silent, asking no questions. He seemed
always to be thinking. By Schwarz's orders he was left alone. Then, one
morning, he was surprised by the news that he was well enough to sit
up. When he had been propped with pillows, the nurse he liked best--the
one with the hard features and soft eyes--slipped a roll of dilapidated
newspapers under the listless hands that lay on the turned-over sheet.

"English," she said, and saw that his eyes brightened.

* * * * *

His left hand, with the tell-tale mutilated finger, began painfully to
open out the heavy roll. He could not help much with the other hand,
for his right arm had been so injured that it had been strapped to his
side for weeks, and the muscles had withered. They would recover tone,
and the arm its strength, Schwarz prophesied, but he was only just
beginning again to use his right hand.

This was the first time he had read anything except the notices posted
up on the hospital walls, which forbade loud talking and other
offenses. To see the _Illustrated London News_ and the _Daily Mail_ and
the _Chronicle_, dated on days of September, made him feel more than
ever that he had died, and come back to earth on sufferance as a ghost.
For him there had been no autumn nor winter. The world had ended on a
hot night in August. There had been summer, and then blackness. Now it
was spring.

September 10th. September 11th. September 13th.

The _Illustrated London News_ lay on top. He laid back the cover. There
was a battle scene on the first page. It looked vaguely familiar.
British lancers and helmeted German Uhlans were fighting furiously
together. Apparently it was night. The background was lit by flames
from a burning village. It was an impressionist effect, well presented.
The man felt very tired and old as he looked at the picture. Pains
throbbed through his head and body and limbs, reminding him of each
wound now healed. He turned over the page and several others. Near the
middle of the paper he opened to one entirely given up to small
photographs of officers. "Dead on the Field of Honor," he read. Under
each portrait were a few lines of fine print. He began with the
left-hand side, at the top. Faces of strangers. Then two he recognized,
with a leap of the heart. One had been an acquaintance, one an old
friend. Their names rushed back to him, as if spoken by their own
voices, even befor