"A cough--such a bad cough."

I went with him towards the wagon, and there beheld the sad spectacle of
a youth in the last stages of tuberculosis. Thin beyond description, a
living skeleton, the poor boy turned his great glassy eyes towards me in
supplication. I drew the father aside. It was best to be frank. I
shook my head and said it would be useless to move his son. We had no
doctor, and his illness was beyond our competence. Cover him well, and
try to reach a big city as soon as possible.

As I turned away, a sturdy youth tapped me gently on the arm, begging
shelter for his great-grandmother, a woman ninety-three years old, whom
he had carried on his back all the way from St. Quentin. A cot in the
entrance hall was all prudence permitted me to offer, and it was
charming to see how tenderly the young fellow bore the poor little
withered woman to her resting-place. She was so dazed that I fear she
hardly realized what was happening, but tears of gratitude streamed down
her cheeks when her boy appeared with a bowl of hot soup, coaxing her to
drink, like a child, and finally curling up on the rug beside her bed.

Five times that evening the great refectory table was surrounded by
hungry men and women; five times I ladled out soup and vegetables to
forty persons, and five times we all helped to wash up. So when all was
finally cleaned away, and Madame Guix and I fell exhausted onto two
kitchen chairs, it was well onto eleven P. M.

My clever nurse informed me that she had arranged for the departure in a
cart of the mother whose baby we had buried, and I in turn told her of
my climb in the park and the approach of the cannon. It was evident