e of corpses in shell craters, and searching for water in the
canteens and biscuits in the haversacks of the dead. One Gray who was
completely entombed except his head remarked that he was all right if
some one would dig him out. At his side showed the legs of a man who had
been buried face downward. Ribs of the wounded broken in; features of
the dead mashed by the heels of the Brown countercharge! With every turn
of his glance his surroundings grew more intimate in details of horror
to the judge's son. On the earth, saturated with rivulets and little
lakes of blood, gleamed the lead shrapnel bullets and the brighter,
nickelled rifle-bullets and the barrels of rifles dropped from the hands
of the fallen.

"I'd have bled to death if you hadn't put on that bandage. You saved my
life!" whispered the man next to the judge's son, who was Tom Fragini.

"Did I? Did I?" exclaimed the judge's son. "Well, that's something."

"It certainly is to me," replied Tom, holding out his hand, and thus
they shook hands, this Gray and this Brown. "Maybe some time, when the
war's over, I can thank you in more than words."

"More than words! Perhaps you can do that now. You--you haven't a
cigarette, old fellow?" asked the judge's son. "I haven't smoked for
three days."

"Yes, only I roll mine," said Tom.

"So do I mine," said the judge's son.

"But with a game hand I--"

"Oh, I've the hands. It's my leg that's been mashed up," said the
judge's son. "Labor and capital!" he added cheerily as he dropped the
cosmopolitan tobacco on the cosmopolitan wafer of rice-paper.

They smoked and smiled at each other in the glow of that better passion
when wounds have let out the poison of conflict, while the doctors and
the hospital-corps men began their attention to the critical cases and
on down the slopes the mills of war were grinding out more dead and
wounded.

"At the hospital where I was interne before the war we were trying to
save a crippled boy the use of his leg," remarked a reserve surgeon.
"Half a dozen surgeons held consultations over that boy--yes, just for
one leg. And now look at this!"

XLIV

TURNING THE TABLES

"I shall take a little nap. There will be plenty to do later," said
Westerling, after the last telegram detaching the reserves for
concentration had gone.

Yes, he would rest while the troops were in motion. The staff should see
that he was still the same self-contained commander whose every faculty
was