my son is fighting on the hill. It is one of their men they have
brought by." He urged us on again, and it seemed to me as if I
noticed--or was it my imagination--a new note of appeal in his face.
Suddenly another stretcher was brought past. The colonel at my
side jumped from his horse, crying out, "My boy," and a feeble voice
answered, "Father." We all stopped as if a command had been
given, to look at the young officer who lay on the stretcher, his eyes
all aglow with enthusiasm and joy, unmindful of his own wound as
he cried out, "Father, how splendid that the relief should just come
from you! Goon. We held out splendidly. All we need is ammunition
and a little moral support. Go on, don't stop for me, I am all right."
The old colonel stood like a statue of bronze. His face had become
suddenly ashen gray. He looked at the doctor and tried to catch his
expression. The doctor seemed grave. But the young man urged
us on, saying, "Go on, go on, I'll be all right to-morrow." The whole
incident had not lasted more than five minutes, barely longer than it
takes to write it. The colonel mounted his horse, sternly
commanding us to march forward, but the light had died out of his
eyes.

Within the next ten minutes a hail of shrapnel was greeting us, but
hardly any one of us was conscious of it, so terribly and deeply were
we affected by the scene of tragedy that had just been enacted
before us. I remember foolishly mumbling something to the silent
man riding next to me, something about the power of recuperation
of youth, about the comparative harmlessness of the pointed,
steelmantled rifle bullets which on account of their terrific percussion
make small clean wounds and rarely cause splintering of the bone
or blood poisoning. I remember saying that I had quite a medical
knowledge and that it seemed to me that his son was not mortally