And Stewart, calling down blessings upon her head, filled up. Never had tobacco tasted so good, never had that old pipe seemed so sweet, as when he blew out the first puff upon the morning air.
“Salvation Yeo was right,” he said. “As a hungry man’s food, a sad man’s cordial, a chilly man’s fire, there’s nothing like it under the canopy of heaven! I only wish you could enjoy it too!”
“I can enjoy your enjoyment!” she laughed as they set happily off together.
At the corner of the wood, Stewart turned for a last look at the house.
“How glad I am I didn’t break in!” he said.
CHAPTER XII
AN ARMY IN ACTION
The sound of cannonading grew fiercer and fiercer, as they advanced, and the undertone of rifle fire more perceptible. It was evident that the Germans were rapidly getting more and more guns into action, and that the infantry attack was also being hotly pressed. Below them in the valley, they caught glimpses from time to time, as the trees opened out a little, of the gray-clad host marching steadily forward, as though to overwhelm the forts by sheer weight of numbers; and then, as they came out above a rocky bluff, they saw a new sight—an earnest that the Belgians were fighting to some purpose.
In a level field beside the road a long tent had been pitched, and above it floated the flag of the Red Cross. Toward it, along the road, came slowly a seemingly endless line of motor ambulances. Each of them in turn stopped opposite the tent, and white-clad assistants lifted out the stretchers, each with its huddled occupant, and carried them quickly, yet very carefully, inside the tent. In a moment the bearers were back again, pushed the empty stretchers into place, and the ambulance turned and sped swiftly back toward the battlefield. Here, too, it was evident that there was admirable and smoothly-working system—a system which alleviated, so far as it was possible to do so, the horror and the suffering of battle.
Stewart could close his eyes and see what was going on inside that tent. He could see the stripping away of the clothing, the hasty examination, the sterilization of the wound, and then, if an operation was necessary, the quick preparation, the application of the ether-cone and the swift, unerring flash of the surgeon’s knife.
“That’s where I should be,” he said, half to himself, “I might be of some use there!” And then he turned his eyes eastward along the road. “Great heavens! Look at that gun.”