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Spruce ground his teeth, but he made no comment. All he said was, “You go git Captain Hale and report. Tell the captain I got his folks’ address. They’ll want him sent home. They’re rich folks and they were coming on; guess they’re on the way now. Be quiet!”

The soldier was looking at the placid face. A sob choked him. “He said, ‘Thank you,’ every time I gave him anything,” he gulped. “God! it’s murder to put fools like me at nursing; and the country full of women that know how and want to come!”

“S-s-s! ‘Tain’t no good talking. You done your best. Go and report.”

As the wretched soldier lumbered off, Spruce set his teeth on an ugly oath.

“I ought to have stayed, maybe,” he thought, “but I’ve been doing with so little sleep, my head was feeling dirty queer; and the doctor sent me. Collapse, of course; temperature ran down to normal, and poor Tooley didn’t notice, and him too weak to talk! Well, I hope I git the G boys through, that’s all I ask!”

He went over to the next cot, where lay the nearest of the G boys, greeting him cheerily. “Hello, Dick?”

Dick was a handsome young specter, just beginning to turn the corner in a bad case of typhoid fever. His blue eyes lighted at Spruce’s voice; and he sent a smile back at Spruce’s smile. “Did you get some sleep?” said he. “What’s that you have in your hand?”

“That’s milk, real milk from a cow. Yes, lots of sleep; you drink that.”

The sick man drank it with an expression of pleasure. “I don’t believe any of the others get milk,” he murmured; “save the rest for Edgar.”

“Edgar don’t need it, Dick,” Spruce answered gently.

Dick drew a long, shivering sigh and his eyes wandered to the screen. “He was a soldier and he died for his country jest the same as if he were hit by a Mauser,” said Spruce–he had taken the sick boy’s long, thin hand and was smoothing his fingers.

“It’s no more ‘an what we all got to expect when we enlist.”

“Of course,” said Dick, smiling, “that’s all right, for him or for me, but he–he was an awfully good fellow, Chris.”

“Sure,” said Spruce. “Now, you lie still; I got to look after the other boys.”

“Come back when you have seen them, Chris.”

“Sure.”

Spruce made his rounds. He was the star nurse of the hospital. It was partly experience. Chris Spruce had been a soldier in the regulars and fought Indians and helped the regimental surgeon through a bad attack of typhoid. But it was as much a natural gift. Chris had a light foot, a quick eye, a soft voice; he was indomitably cheerful and consoled the most querulous patient in the ward by describing how much better was his lot with no worse than septic pneumonia, than that of a man whom he (Spruce) had known well who was scalped. Spruce had enlisted from a Western town where he had happened to be at the date of his last discharge. He had a great opinion of the town. And he never tired recalling the scene of their departure, amid tears and cheers and the throbbing music of a brass band, with their pockets full of cigars, and an extra car full of luncheon boxes, and a thousand dollars company spending money to their credit.

“A man he comes up to me,” says Spruce, “big man in the town, rich and all that. He says, calling me by name–I don’t know how he ever got my name, but he had it–he says, ‘I’m told you’ve been with the regulars; look after the boys a little,’ says he. ‘That I will,’ says I, ‘I’ve been six years in the service and I know a few wrinkles.’ I do, too. He gave me a five-dollar bill after he’d talked a while to me, and one of his own cigars. ‘Remember the town’s back of you!’ says he. ‘Tis, too. I’d a letter from the committee they got there, asking if we had everything; offering to pay for nurses if they’d be allowed. Oh, it’s a bully town!”