ved our own fellows. He looked so drawn and pale that
I was not sure but what he was really sick, until it was all over.
When he had the grave dug down to the distance of a couple of feet,
the guard stopped him and made him fill it in again, which he did,
and erected a wooden cross to his own memory, and delivered a
touching funeral oration eulogizing the departed.

We all got in early that day, but most of us decided we would not try
the "sick parade" again.

This was in the month of January, which is the rainy season, and
there was every excuse for the boys' not wanting to work--besides the
big reason for not wanting to help the Germans.

One night, when some of our fellows came in from work, cold, wet, and
tired, and were about to attack their supper of black bread and soup,
the mail came in, and one of the boys from Toronto got a letter from
a young lady there who had been out on the Kingston Road to see an
Internment Camp. He let me read the letter. She had gone out one
beautiful July day, she said, and found the men having their evening
meal under the beeches, and they did so enjoy their strawberries and
ice-cream; and they had such lovely gardens, she said, and enough
vegetables in them to provide for the winter. The conclusion of the
letter is where the real sting came: "I am so glad, dear Bert, that
you are safe in Germany out of the smoke and roar and dirt of the
trenches. It has made me feel so satisfied about you, to see these
prisoners. I was worrying a little about you before I saw them. But
now I won't worry a bit. I am glad to see prisoners can be so happy.
I will just hope you are as well cared for as they are.... Daddy and
Mother were simply wild about Germany when they were there two years
before the war. They say the German ways are so quaint and the
children have such pretty manners, and I am afraid you will be
awfully hard to please when you come back, for Daddy and Mother were
crazy about German cooking."

I handed the letter back, and Bert and I looked at each other. He
rolled his eyes around the crowded room, where five hundred men were
herded together. Two smoking stoves, burning their miserable peat,
made all the heat there was. The double row of berths lined the
walls. Outside, the rain and sleet fell dismally. Bert had a bowl of
prison soup before him, and a hunk of bread, black and heavy. He was
hungry, wet, tired, and dirty, but all he said was, "Lord! What _do_
they understand?"