"Because when you're tired you always talk broad Scotch; secondly, because you don't seem to have shaved for a week; and thirdly, because you're as dirty as any old tramp."
"Ah! goodness help us, Sturdy," replied the doctor, "it is tramp, tramp all day and all night here. I haven't had my shoes off since the hurricane, nor poor Paddy here either; and as for Jack, he's working in the trenches now with the naval brigade at the big guns. And when he comes back, after he has a mouthful of food, he just sets to and helps me. Man, it's a comfort to have friends around you in a time like this. Look, see, I've got the hospital tents a kind of rigged again. But, dear Sturdy, I declare that if I were to tell you one-half of what my poor sick and wounded have suffered these last two or three days, it would bring tears to your eyes, rough old sea-dog though you are."
"Terrible!"
"Ay is it, Sturdy. Myself and the other doctors were getting a nice lot of things stored away for the patients. But, man, the tents were blown down, and the food and stores and lint and bandages all destroyed. When we got the tents off the creatures, we found dozens dead in bed; and from the rest, with their poor wounded limbs and necks and heads, the very blankets were torn by the strength of the gale. Sturdy, my friend, it's the truth I tell you: only those of the wounded that are deid and awa' [dead and gone] are to be envied. I won't ask you to come to the hospital, the sichts are far ower sickenin'. Talk o' the glory o' war! Man, it's yonder under those drippin' tents you could see all its ghastliness."
"And is cholera still raging?"
Reikie pointed to a wretched apology for a tent at some distance from the rest.
"Look for yoursel', Sturdy."
Two and two in single file, each pair with a ghastly burden between them, fully eighteen men were marching away from the camp.
"It's burial-time, that's all," said Reikie, then abruptly changed the subject. "Do you see those men yonder scattering themselves over the Upland?"
"Yes; and they don't seem unhappy. Where are they off to?"