and his stream of little, vapid
remarks, at his end of the sheet, did much to drown the clicking and
snapping of clamps on the other side of it, where the surgeons were
working to give him his one chance.

A nurse held the sheet on one side of the table, and a priest-orderly
held it at the other, and at his head stood a doctor, and the
_Directrice_ and another nurse, answering the string of vapid remarks
and trying to sooth him. And three feet farther along, hidden from him
and the little clustering company of people trying to distract his
attention, stood the two surgeons, and the two young students, and just
the tops of their hair could be seen over the edge of the sheet. They
whispered a little from time to time, and worked very rapidly, and there
was quite animated talking when the bone saw began to rasp.

The man babbled of his home, and of his wife. He said he wanted to see
her again, very much. And the priest-orderly, who wanted to drop his end
of the sheet and administer the last Sacrament at once, grew very
nervous and uneasy. So the man rambled on, gasping, and they replied to
him in soothing manner, and told him that there was a chance that he
might see her again. So he talked about her incessantly, and with
affection, and his whispered words and the cheery replies quite drowned
out the clicking and the snapping of the clamps. After a short while,
however, his remarks grew less coherent, and he seemed to find himself
back in the trenches, telephoning. He tried hard to telephone, he tried
hard to get the connection. The wires seemed to be cut, however, and he
grew puzzled, and knit his brows and swore, and tried again and again,
over and over. He had something to say over the telephone, the trench
communication wire, and his mind wandered, and he tried very hard, in
his wandering mind, to get the connection. A shell had cut the line
evidently. He grew annoyed and restless, and gazed anxiously and
perplexedly at the white sheet, held so steadily across his middle.
From the waist down he could not move, so all his restlessness took
place on the upper side of the sheet, and he was unaware of what was
going on on the other side of it, and so failed to hear the incessant
rattle of clamps and the subdued whispers from the other side.

He struggled hard to get the connection, in his mind, over the
telephone. The wires seemed to be cut, and he cried out in anxiety and
distress. Then he grew more and more feeble, and