light compounded from the colour of the walls and the old pictures,
as well as from the robes and uniforms of the dignitaries and the gowns
of the many ladies.

As ceremonies these welcomes were always short, though there was always
a number of presentations made, and the Prince was soon in the open
again. In the open there were war veterans to inspect, for in whatever
town he entered, large or small or remote, there was always a good
showing of Canadians who had served and won honours in Europe.

Everywhere, in great cities or in a hamlet that was no more than a
scattering of homesteads round a prairie's siding, His Royal Highness
showed a particular keenness to meet these soldiers. They were his own
comrades in arms, as he always called them, and when he said that he
meant it, for he never willingly missed an opportunity of getting among
them and resuming the comradeship he had learned to value at the Front.

In most towns, as in Halifax, his round of visits always included the
hospitals. His car took him through the bright sunshine of the Halifax
streets to these big and very efficient buildings, where he went
through the wards, chatting here and there to a cot or a convalescent
patient, and not forgetting the natty Canadian nurses or the doctors,
or even, as in one of the hospitals on this day, a patient lying in a
tent in the grounds outside the radius of the visit.

In Halifax, also, there was another grim fact of the war which called
for special attention; that was the area devastated by the terrible
explosion of a ship in the docks in December, 1917.

The party left the main streets to climb over the shoulder of the
peninsula to where the ruined area stood. It is to the north of the
town, on the side of the hill that curves largely to the very water's
edge. Down off the docks, and an immense distance away it seems from
the slope of ruin, a steamer loaded with high explosive collided with
another, caught fire and blew up, and on the entire bosom of that slope
can be seen what that gigantic detonation accomplished.

The force of the explosion swept up the hill and the wooden houses went
down like things of card. In the trail of the explosion followed fire.
As the plank houses collapsed the fires within them ignited their frail
fabric and the entire hillside became a mass of flames.

The Prince looked upon a hill set with scars in rows, the rock
foundations of houses that had been. Houses had, in the m