The little corral in which we were allowed to walk had a barbed-wire fence around it—­a good one, too, eight strands, and close together.  One side of the corral was a high wall, and in the enclosure on the other side of the wall were the lung patients.

One afternoon I saw a young Canadian boy looking wistfully through the gate, and I went over and spoke to him.  He was the only one who could speak English among the “lungers.”  The others were Russians, French, and Belgians.  The boy was dying of loneliness as well as consumption.  He came from Ontario, though I forget the name of the town.

“Do you think it will be over soon?” he asked me eagerly.  “Gee, I’m sick of it—­and wish I could get home.  Last night I dreamed about going home.  I walked right in on them—­dirt and all—­with this tattered old tunic—­and a dirty face.  Say, it didn’t matter—­my mother just grabbed me—­and it was dinner-time—­they were eating turkey—­a great big gobbler, all brown—­and steaming hot—­and I sat down in my old place—­it was ready for me—­and just began on a leg of turkey...”

A spasm of coughing seized him, and he held to the bars of the gate until it passed.

Then he went on:  “Gee, it was great—­it was all so clear.  I can’t believe that I am not going!  I think the war must be nearly over—­”

Then the cough came again—­that horrible, strangling cough—­and I knew that it would be only in his dreams that he would ever see his home!  For to him, at least, the war was nearly over, and the day of peace at hand.

Before I left the lazaret, the smart-Alec young German doctor who had made faces at the little bugler blew gaily in one day and breezed around our beds, making pert remarks to all of us.  I knew him the minute he came in the door, and was ready for him when he passed my bed.

He stopped and looked at me, and made some insulting remark about my beard, which was, I suppose, quite a sight, after a month of uninterrupted growth.  Then he began to make faces at me.

I raised myself on my elbow, and regarded him with the icy composure of an English butler.  Scorn and contempt were in my glance, as much as I could put in; for I realized that it was hard for me to look dignified and imposing, in a hospital pajama suit of dirt-colored flannelette, with long wisps of amber-colored hair falling around my face, and a thick red beard long enough now to curl back like a drake’s tail.

I knew I looked like a valentine, but my stony British stare did the trick in spite of all handicaps, and he turned abruptly and went out.

The first week of June, I was considered able to go back to the regular prison-camp.  A German guard came for me, and I stepped out in my pajamas to the outer room where our uniforms were kept.  There were many uniforms there—­smelling of the disinfectants—­with the owners’ names on them, but mine was missing.  The guard tried to make me take one which was far too short for me, but I refused.  I knew I looked bad enough, without having elbow sleeves and short pants; and it began to look as if I should have to go to bed until some good-sized patient came in.