the names of the positions taken and daily they heard of fresh
batches of wounded arriving, which were not mentioned on the
bulletin-board.

"We continue to win," said the doctors and nurses invariably in answer
to all questions. "General Westerling announces that everything is going
as planned."

"You must know that speech well!" observed the judge's son to the nurse
of his section.

Her lips twitched in a kind of smile.

"Letter-perfect!" she replied "It's official."

In two weeks, so fast had the puncture from the aseptic little pellet of
civilized warfare healed under civilization's medical treatment, the
judge's son was up and about, though very weak. But the rules strictly
confined his promenades to the barracks yard. There might be news coming
down the traffic-gorged castle road out of the region where the guns
sounded that convalescents were not intended to hear. For news could
travel in other ways than by bulletin-boards; and the judge's son,
merely watching the faces of medical officers, guessed that it was
depressing. But after the first attack on Engadir their faces lighted.
The very thrill of victory seemed to be in the air.

"It's in the main line of defence!" called the doctor on his morning
rounds of the cots. "They've made Westerling a field-marshal. He's
outwitted the Browns! In a few days now we'll have the range!"

How staggering was the cost he was not to realize till later, when the
ambulance stewards kept repeating:

"More to come!"

A newcomer, who took the place of a man who had died on the cot next to
the judge's son, had been in the fight. He was still ether-sick and weak
from the amputation of his right arm, with a dazed, glassy, and far-away
look in his eyes, as if everything in the world was strange and
uncertain.

"The fearful flashes--the explosions--the gusts of steel in the air!"
he whispered.

The next night Westerling followed up his supposed advantage at Engadir
as he had planned, and there was no sleep for the thunders and the light
of the explosions through the barracks-room windows.

"I can see what is happening and feel--and feel!" said the man who had
been at Engadir.

In the morning the bulletin announced that more positions were taken,
with very heavy losses--to the enemy. But the news that travelled
unofficially from tongue to tongue down the castle road and spoke in the
faces of doctors and nurses said, "And to us!" plainly enough, even if
the judge's son h