I have every satisfaction in that fact, or in the cause of it; which, cynics might say, a member of my profession would easily manage to prevent, were he a city physician instead of a regimental surgeon. Still, idleness is insupportable to me. I have tried going about among the few villages hard by, but their worst disease is one to which this said regimental surgeon, with nothing but his pay, can apply but small remedy--poverty. To-day I have paced the long, straight lines of the camp; from the hospital to the bridge, and back again to the hospital--have tried to take a vivid interest in the loungers, the foot-ball players, and the wretched, awkward squad turned out in never-ending parade. With each hour of the quiet autumn afternoon have I watched the sentinel mount the little stockaded hillock, and startle the camp with the old familiar boom of the great Sebastopol bell. Then, I have shut my hut-door, taken to my books, and studied till my head warned me to stop. The evening post--but only business letters. I rarely have any other. I have no one to write to me--no one to write to. Sometimes I have been driven to wish I had; some one friend with whom it would be possible to talk in pen and ink, on other matters than business. Yet, _cui bono?_ To no friend should I or could I let out my real self; the only thing in the letter that was truly and absolutely me would be the great grim signature: "Max Urquhart." Were it otherwise--were there any human being to whom I could lay open my whole heart, trust with my whole history;--but no, that were utterly impossible now. No more of this. No more, until the end. That end, which at once solves all difficulties, every year brings nearer. Nearly forty, and a doctor's life is usually shorter than most men's. I shall be an old man soon, even if there come none of those sudden chances against which I have of course provided. The end. How and in what manner it is to be done, I am not yet clear. But it shall be done, before my death or after. "Max Urquhart, M.D." I go on signing my name mechanically, with those two business-like letters after it, and thinking how odd it would be to sign it in any other fashion. How strange,--did any one care to look at my signature in any way except thus, with the two professional letters after it--a common-place signature of business. Equally strange, perhaps, that such a thought as this last should have entered my head, or that I should have taken the trouble, and yielded to the weakness of writing it down. It all springs from idleness--sheer idleness; the very same cause that makes Treherne, whom I have known do duty cheerily for twenty-four hours in the trenches, lounge, smoke, yawn, and play the flute. There--it has stopped. I heard the postman rapping at his hut-door--the young simpleton has got a letter.