using, and both were stained. We turned away sickened at the sight,
and retraced the passage with the nuns. As we walked along, they
pointed out to us marks we had not noticed before--red finger-marks
and splashes of blood on the pale blue distemper of the wall. All down
the passage and the staircase we could trace them, and even in the
hall below. Four men had been standing in the doorway of the upper
ward. Two were killed; the others, bleeding and blinded by the
explosion, had groped their way along that wall and down the stair. I
have seen many terrible sights, but for utter and concentrated horror I
have never seen anything to equal those finger-marks, the very sign-
manual of Death. When I think of them, I see, in the dim light of the
early autumn morning, the four men talking; I hear the wild shriek of
the shell and the deafening crash of its explosion; and then silence,
and two bleeding men groping in darkness and terror for the air.




IX. A Pause



The life of a hospital at the front is a curious mixture of excitement
and dullness. One week cases will be pouring in, the operating theatre
will be working day and night, and everyone will have to do their
utmost to keep abreast of the rush; next week there will be nothing to
do, and everyone will mope about the building, and wonder why they
were ever so foolish as to embark on such a futile undertaking. For it
is all emergency work, and there is none of the dull routine of the
ordinary hospital waiting list, which we are always trying to clear off,