The Political Officer listened to the story, and, embracing hypnotism in the studies of his exile, made a note of it. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: _Sharm_, a stain of dishonour that can only be obliterated in blood. The conception that underlies the blood-feud.] THE OTHER SIDE A deep silence brooded over No. 3 Ward, Officers. It was late afternoon in October, but the room was as yet unillumined from within. The two long lines of windows that confronted one another--the ward was a temporary hut-building--did so in a contrast of lights, the eastern windows, backed by grey obscurity, reflecting broken beams of the glory of gold and purple and fiery red that streamed in from the west. The two lines of beds, the indistinct greys and whites of the ward, were delicately touched by the warm glow where they rose into its radiance. It picked out the short curves of the turned-back sheet, humped with the recumbent form beneath, in an imponderable caress upon the broken humanity that lay, desperately finite, under the splendour that knows no final setting. A mingled odour of disinfectant and anæsthetic hung in the air, explanatory of the dead quiet, of the heavy breathing that was part of the silence. This was a ward of the severely wounded, recently arrived. From the utmost climax of human effort, thunderous to the ear, dreadful to the eye, maddening to the soul whether it exulted triumphant over the menace of instant extinction or shrank appalled and paralysed in the horror of brutal death, from the fierce superiority of the unscathed killer, from the sudden shock, these men had come, many of them unconsciously, by train and ship and train and car to the white and green hospital on the empty moorland, to the hushed screened peace of the bed-ranked ward. At the further end of the ward a Medical Officer stood in murmured conversation with a Sister. He was outlined black against the radiance of the sunset, but on her the glow fell fully illuminant, rosy upon the starched whiteness of the coif and apron, touching the pale face into faint colour. Her large, serious eyes rested upon him, attentive to his instructions, glanced away to the patient in the end bed as he spoke. "Number Ten must be very carefully watched, Sister," he said, the little smile upon his face indicative only of his confidence in the quiet young woman before him, in no way minimising the gravity of his words. "I am afraid we are going to have a very hard fight for him. But we mustn't let him slip through our fingers. We'll keep him on this side if we can." She assented with a nod of the head, and a long deep breath that was clearly a sigh. He scrutinised her sharply. "You have something on your mind, Sister. No bad news, I hope?" His voice was very kind. "Captain Hershaw is all right?" The Sister's engagement was generally known in the hospital. The large eyes opened, revealing a mute, long-suffered anxiety.