had two empty classrooms, the floors of which we covered with straw, on which another fifty patients could lie in comfort until we could find better accommodation for them.  We could not, of course, have fires in these rooms, as it would have been dangerous, but we warmed them by the simple plan of filling them with patients and shutting all the windows and doors.  For the first few nights, as a matter of fact, we had to sleep in these rooms on straw ourselves, and in the greatest luxury.  No one who has slept all his life in a bed would ever realize how comfortable straw is, and for picturesqueness has it an equal?

I went into the Straw Ward on my round one wild and stormy night.  Outside the wind was raging and the rain fell in torrents, and it was so dark that one had to feel for the door.  Inside a dozen men lay covered up with blankets on a thick bed of straw, most of them fast asleep, while beside one knelt a nurse with a stable lantern, holding a cup to his lips.  It was a picture that an artist might have come far to see—­the wounded soldiers in their heavy coats, covered by the brown blankets; the nurse in her blue uniform and her white cap, the stable lantern throwing flickering shadows on the walls.  It was something more than art, and as I glanced up at the crucifix hanging on the wall I felt that the picture was complete.

Above the two larger wards was a huge dormitory, divided up by wooden partitions into some sixty cubicles, which provided sleeping accommodation for the bulk of our staff.  They were arranged in four ranks, with passages between and washing arrangements in the passages, and the cubicles themselves were large and comfortable.  It was really quite well planned, and was most useful to us, though ventilation had evidently not appealed to its architect.  Two rows were reserved for the nurses, and in the others slept our chauffeurs and stretcher-bearers, with a few of the priests.  Our friends were at first much shocked at the idea of this mixed crowd, but as a matter of fact it worked very well, and there was very little to grumble at.  The only real disadvantage was the noise made by early risers in the morning, convincing us more than ever of the essential selfishness of the early bird.  A few of us occupied separate rooms over in the wing which the priests had for the most part reserved for themselves, and these we used in the daytime as our offices.

But the real sights of our establishment were our kitchen and our chef; we might almost have been an Oxford college.  Maurice had come to us in quite a romantic way.  One night we took in a soldier with a bullet wound of the throat.  For some days he was pretty bad, but he won all our hearts by his cheerfulness and pluck.  When at last he improved sufficiently to be able to speak, he told us that he was the assistant chef at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels.  We decided that he ought to be kept in a warm, moist atmosphere for a long time, and he