about
her neck, and reaching to her helmet, he had laughingly pronounced the
experiment safe.

A motor carried them to where the road ended, and from there, a little
one-horse ambulance took them on to almost the last trees of the forest.
There was no life to be seen anywhere. During the last mile, they had
passed through a continuous double line of graves; here and there a group
of tiny crosses keeping one another company; others standing singly,
looking strangely lonesome amid the torn-up earth and shattered trees.
But even these had ceased. Death itself seemed to have been frightened
away from this terror-haunted desert.

Looking down, she could see thin wreaths of smoke, rising from the
ground. From underneath her feet there came a low, faint, ceaseless
murmur.

"Quick," said the doctor. He pushed her in front of him, and she almost
fell down a flight of mud-covered steps that led into the earth. She
found herself in a long, low gallery, lighted by a dim oil lamp,
suspended from the blackened roof. A shelf ran along one side of it,
covered with straw. Three men lay there. The straw was soaked with
their blood. They had been brought in the night before by the stretcher-
bearers. A young surgeon was rearranging their splints and bandages, and
redressing their wounds. They would lie there for another hour or so,
and then start for their twenty kilometre drive over shell-ridden roads
to one or another of the great hospitals at the base. While she was
there, two more cases were brought in. The doctor gave but a glance at
the first one and then made a sign; and the bearers passed on with him to
the further end of the gallery. He seemed to understand, for he gave a
low, despairing cry and the tears sprang to his eyes. He was but a boy.
The other had a foot torn off. One of the orderlies gave him two round
pieces of wood to hold in his hands while the young surgeon cut away the
hanging flesh and bound up the stump.

The doctor had been whispering to one of the bearers. He had the face of
an old man, but his shoulders were broad and he looked sturdy. He
nodded, and beckoned Joan to follow him up the slippery steps.

"It is breakfast time," he explained, as they emerged into the air. "We
leave each other alone for half an hour--even the snipers. But we must
be careful." She followed in his footsteps, stooping so low that her
hands could have touched the ground. They had to be sure that they did
no