ranks of skeletoned ghosts.  The place was American—­new, excruciatingly clean, and was run like a factory.  We were proud of it, and of the business-like young medical students who as orderlies and bookkeepers and helpers went about in their brand new uniforms—­young crown princes of democracy, twice as handsome and three times as dignified as they would have been if they had royal blood.  Henry called them the heirs apparent “of all the ages” and enjoyed them greatly.  They certainly gave the place a tone, converting a sprawling ugly pile of brown boards into a king’s palace.  When we had finished our errand at the hospital and were returning through the garden, we met our young doctor.  He was sitting on an old stone bench, among the asters and dahlias—­wounded.  It was not a serious wound from an ordinary man’s stand-point; but from the Young Doctor’s it was grave indeed.  For it was a bullet wound through his hand.  He thought it would not affect the muscles permanently—­but no one could know.  Then he sat there in the mediaeval garden among the flowers under the yew trees and told us how it happened; took us out to the first aid post again, and on out to the first line trenches, and over them into No Man’s Land, stumbling over the dead, helping the stretcher bearers with the wounded.  In time he came to a wounded German—­a Prussian officer with a shell-wound in his leg.

He told us what happened, impersonally, as one who is listening to another man’s story in his own mouth.  “I gave him something like a first aid to stop the bleeding,” the young Doctor paused, picked a ravelling from his bandage and went on, still detached from the narrative.  “Then I put my arm around him, to help him back to the ambulance.”  Again he hesitated and said quietly, “That was a half mile back and the shells were still popping—­more or less—­around us.”  He looked for appreciation of the situation.  He got it, smiled and went on without lifting his voice.  “Then he did it”

“Not that fellow?” exclaimed Henry.

“Well, how?” from me.

“Oh, I don’t know.  He just did it,” droned the Young Doctor.  “We were talking along; and then he seemed to quit talking.  I looked up.  The pistol was at my head; I knocked it away as he fired.  It got my hand!” He stopped, began poking the gravel with his toe, and smiled again as one who has heard an old story and wants to be polite.  To Henry and me, it was unbelievable.  We sat down on the hoary, moss-covered curb of the ancient fountain regardless of our spanking new uniforms and cried:  “Well, my Heavenly home!” He nodded, drew a deep breath and said, “That’s the how of it.”

[Illustration:  He told us what happened impersonally as one who is listening to another man’s story in his own mouth]

“Well, what do you know about—­”

Then Henry checked me with, “You weren’t expecting it?  Did he make no warning sign?”