“Anywhere where it’s light.  I want you to see her picture—­she’d think you’re great.”

And so before he would let us touch his wound, we had to feel in his breast pocket and draw forth a wallet from which he produced the cherished photographs.

At length we completed his bandaging and I left Madame Guix to add the finishing touches and went to the kitchen where Soeur Laurent was standing over a huge range, ladling soup from two immense copper boilers.  There were men, women and children holding out cups and mugs, a half-dozen dusty cavalrymen were skinning two rabbits in one corner, and as many other soldiers were peeling vegetables which they threw into another pot full of boiling water.

This was no time to ask permission.  The poor sister was already half distracted by the demands of the famished refugees and combatants, so taking a ladle from the wall, I dipped into the pot and strained some bouillon into a few cups that I found in a cupboard.  I intended giving this to our patients should they wake and call for drink, and I was just lifting my tray to go when a loud thumping on the front door made me set it down in haste.

I looked at Soeur Laurent, who was preparing to answer the summons, much to the dismay of the soldiers.

“I’ll go,” I called, and hurried out into the vestibule and down the wide white marble steps.  As I threw back the huge oak door someone brushed past me, calling “Two men and a stretcher,” and there in the brilliant moonlight I beheld the most ghastly spectacle I had as yet witnessed.

Thrown forward in his saddle, his arms clasped about the horse’s neck, was the form of a dragoon.  The animal that bore him had once been white, but was now so splashed with blood that it was impossible to tell what color was his originally.  Both man and beast were wounded, badly wounded, and how they had come here was a miracle.

The alarm had reached the kitchen and hurrying forward, the troopers soon lifted their comrade from his mount and carried him in.  A lance had pierced his thigh and the horse’s flank, which meant that it had been a hand-to-hand fight, and the blood still flowing freely, proved that the combat was not an hour old!

Madame Guix and I were doing our best when the white face’s of my notary and his wife appeared at the door of the dispensary.

“Madame Huard, we’ve come to tell you you must go!”

“Go?”

“Yes, it is two o’clock and the general who was quartered on us slept four hours and has gone.  When leaving he warned us that the battle would be on here by morning.  We who have a motor are safe, but you who have but horses must flee at once!”

“But I can’t leave the wounded!”

“But you must.  The worst that can happen to them is to be made prisoners—­more than likely they will be carried away by one of our emergency ambulances.  But think of all the young people who look to you for protection!  You cannot desert them; you must go!”