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 172  had been in the blankets, and so on, but I must say Charlie Sands was very queer about it. He stopped and looked at us all in turn, and then he got out the dirtiest handkerchief I have ever seen and wiped his forehead with it.

"Perhaps you'd better say it again," he said; "I don't seem to get it altogther [sic]. You are sure it was the colonel?"

So Tish repeated it, but when she came to the eiderdown pillow he held up his hand.

"All right," he said in a strange tone. "I believe you. I—you don't mind if I go and get a drink of water, do you? My mouth is dry."

Dear Tish watched him as he went away, and shook her head.

"He is changed already," she observed sadly. "That is one of the deadliest effects of war. It takes the bright young spirit of youth and feeds it on stuff cooked by men, with not even time enough to chew properly, and puts it on its stomach in the mud, while its head is in the clouds of idealism. I think that a letter to the Secretary of War might be effective."

I must admit that we had a series of disappointments that day. The first was in finding that they had put Tish's nephew, a grandson of a former Justice of the Supreme Court, into a building with a number of other men. Not only