"I'd have bled to death if you hadn't put on that bandage. You saved my life!" whispered the man next to the judge's son, who was Tom Fragini.
"Did I? Did I?" exclaimed the judge's son. "Well, that's something."
"It certainly is to me," replied Tom, holding out his hand, and thus they shook hands, this Gray and this Brown. "Maybe some time, when the war's over, I can thank you in more than words."
"More than words! Perhaps you can do that now. You—you haven't a cigarette, old fellow?" asked the judge's son. "I haven't smoked for three days."
"Yes, only I roll mine," said Tom.
"So do I mine," said the judge's son.
"But with a game hand I—"
"Oh, I've the hands. It's my leg that's been mashed up," said the judge's son. "Labor and capital!" he added cheerily as he dropped the cosmopolitan tobacco on the cosmopolitan wafer of rice-paper.
They smoked and smiled at each other in the glow of that better passion when wounds have let out the poison of conflict, while the doctors and the hospital-corps men began their attention to the critical cases and on down the slopes the mills of war were grinding out more dead and wounded.
"At the hospital where I was interne before the war we were trying to save a crippled boy the use of his leg," remarked a reserve surgeon. "Half a dozen surgeons held consultations over that boy—yes, just for one leg. And now look at this!"