evident. It did not jibe with Gavin's slight experience with
trained nurses. Wherefore, it puzzled him.

But, perplexity seemed to hurt his brain as much as did the
effort to piece together the shattered fragments of memory.
So he forbore to follow that train of thought. And, again, he
strove to banish mentality and to sink back into the merciful
senselessness from which youth and an iron-and-whalebone
constitution were fighting to rouse him.

But, do what he would to prevent it, consciousness was
creeping more and more in upon him. For, now, he could not
only follow the motions of the wondrously gentle hand on his
forehead, but he could tell that his head was not on the
ground. Instead, it was resting on something warm, and it
was elevated some inches above the grass. He recalled a
war-chromo of a wounded soldier whose head rested on the knee
of a Red Cross nurse,--a nurse who sat on the furrowed earth
of a five-color battlefield, where all real life army
regulations forbade her to set foot.

Was he that soldier? Was he still in the hell of the Flanders
trenches? He had thought the war was over, and that he was
back in America,--in America and on his way South on some odd
and perilous business whose nature he could not now recall.

Another few seconds of mental wandering, and he was himself
again, his mind functioning more and more clearly. With
returning strength of brain came curiosity. Where was he?
How did he chance to be lying here, his head in some sobbing