s of the Haley Cult."

"No," said the nurse, "it was herself."

"Isn't that what I have been telling you?" said the doctor impatiently.
"Soul--soul--soul! A soul somehow on fire."

And with that Cameron had to be content.

Yes, a soul it was, at one time dormant and enwrapped within its coarse
integument. Now, touched into life by some divine fire, it had through
its own subtle power transformed that coarse integument into its own
pure gold. What was that fire? What divine touch had kindled it? And,
more important still, was that fire still aglow, or, having done
its work, had it for lack of food flickered and died out? With these
questions Cameron vexed himself for many days, nor found an answer.

CHAPTER IX

"CORPORAL" CAMERON

Jack Green did not die. Every morning for a fortnight Constable
Cameron felt it to be his duty to make enquiry--the Sergeant, it may be
added--performing the same duty with equal diligence in the afternoon,
and every day the balance, which trembled evenly for some time between
hope and fear, continued to dip more and more decidedly toward the
former.

"He's going to live, I believe," said Dr. Martin one day. "And he owes
it to the nurse." The doctor's devotion to and admiration for Nurse
Haley began to appear to Cameron unnecessarily pronounced. "She simply
would not let him go!" continued the doctor. "She nursed him, sang
to him her old 'Come all ye' songs and Methodist hymns, she spun him
barnyard yarns and orchard idyls, and always 'continued in our next,'
till the chap simply couldn't croak for wanting to hear the next."

At times Cameron caught through the tent walls snatches of those songs
and yarns and idyls, at times he caught momentary glimpses of the bright
young girl who was pouring the vigour of her life into the lad fighting
for his own, but these snatches and glimpses only exasperated him. There
was no opportunity for any lengthened and undisturbed converse, for on
the one hand the hospital service was exacting beyond the strength
of doctor and nurses, and on the other there was serious trouble for
Superintendent Strong and his men in the camps along the line, for a
general strike had been declared in all the camps and no one knew at
what minute it might flare up into a fierce riot.

It was indeed exasperating to Cameron. The relations between himself and
Nurse Haley were unsatisfactory, entirely unsatisfactory. It was clearly
his duty--indeed he owed it to her a