as a priest with a yellow beard, who also used the hole in the
hedge. He used it almost every night, when it was open. He slipped out,
got his drink, and then slipped down to the village to spend the night
with a girl. Only he was crafty, and slipped back again through the hole
before daylight, and was always on duty again in the morning. True, he
was very cross and irritable, and the patients did without things rather
than ask him for them, and sometimes they suffered a great deal, doing
without things, on these mornings when he was so cross.

But with Fouquet, it was different. He walked in boldly through the
gates in the morning, and said that he had been out all night without
leave, and that he was bored to the point of death. So the _Medecin
Chef_ punished him. He imprisoned him, and as there was no prison, he
served his six days' sentence in the open air. He donned his eighty
pounds of marching kit, and tramped up and down the plank walks, and
round behind the _baracques_, in the mud, in full sight of all, so that
all might witness his humiliation. He did not go on duty again in the
ward, and in consequence, the ward suffered through lack of his
grudging, uncouth administration.

Sometimes he met the _Directrice_ as he trudged up and down. He was
always afraid to meet her, because once she had gone to the _Medecin
Chef_ and had him pardoned. Her gentle heart had been touched at the
sight of his public disgrace, so she had had his sentence remitted, and
he had been obliged to go back to the ward, to the work he loathed, to
the patients he despised, after only two hours' freedom in a rare
October sun. Since then, he had carefully avoided the _Directrice_ when
he saw her blue cloak in the distance, coming down the _trottoir_. Women
were a nuisance at the Front.

He frequently encountered the man who picked up papers, and frankly
envied him, for this man had a very easy post. He was mobilized as a
member of the _formation_ of Hospital Number ----, and his work consisted
in picking up scraps of paper scattered about the grounds within the
enclosure. He had a long stick with a nail in the end, and a small
basket because there wasn't much to pick up. With the nail, he picked up
what scraps there were, and did not even have to stoop over to do it. He
walked about in the clean, fresh air, and when it rained, he cuddled up
against the stove in the pharmacy. The present paper-gatherer was a
chemist; his predecessor had bee