And so they carried him away, feet foremost.

They plunged along the muddy paths.  He was convulsed with fear that they would overturn him.  And the jolting sent red-hot pains through his head, and twisted his back terribly.

A Company came straggling up the path, led by no other than the Major, who had been his Company Commander at the beginning of the war.

“Well, young feller, how are you?  You’ll be all right in a day or two.”

Reply was impossible for him, and the Major hurried on.

The men who followed seemed shy of him.  They looked at him covertly, and then turned their eyes quickly away, as if he were some horrible object.  It annoyed him not a little.

That journey was the most painful thing that happened to him.  But each sickening jolt had the compensation of landing him a yard nearer the hospital, and the hope of easing his pains buoyed him up somehow.

When they arrived at the Gunner’s Cave, the Stretcher Bearers put him resolutely down, and intimated that it was not “up to them” to take him any further.  The Ambulance, they said, ought to be there to “take over” from them.  But there was no sign of an Ambulance, and meantime he was literally thirsting for the attentions and comforts of a hospital.  His natural reserve broke completely down.  He begged, and entreated, and prayed them to take him on.

After a little hesitation, they set out once more with a little excusable cursing and grumbling.

It was about seven o’clock when at last they laid him down in the hall of the hospital, and departed with unfeigned gladness.

Two Hospital Orderlies carried him along a passage and into the identical billiard-room that he had seen from the garden.

A Doctor undid the soiled bandages with quick, strong fingers, and bent down to examine the wound with an expression of concentrated ferocity on his face.  An Orderly brought a bowl, and the Doctor began to wash the place.

It was a painful business, but nothing to be compared to the pain produced by the “prober.”  They even tried to shave the hair from the affected spot.  He bore it as long as he could.  But it was too much.  His left side shook and trembled.  It was too terrible to begin to describe.

“It’s no good,” he said, “it’s more than you can expect any one to put up with.  You’ll have to stop it.”

So they tied his head up once more, and he was carried upstairs into a bedroom.  They lifted him on to the bed, managed at length to divest him of his jacket, turned some clothes over him, and left him.

* * * * *

In an hour a raging fever had taken hold of him.

Only intermittently, during the next three or four days, did he so much as touch the world of realities.  The only improvement was his face, which had to a great extent relaxed.  Otherwise the pain and the paralysis were the same, and all the time the fever raged within him.