On the following morning my leg was X-rayed and photographed. I told the surgeon I thought the business of operating could very well be put off until I had had about three more square meals, but he couldn’t see it that way. In the afternoon, I got my first sickening dose of ether, and they took the first lot of iron out of me. I suppose these were just the surface deposits, for they only got five or six pieces. However, they continued systematically. I had five more operations, and every time I came out of the ether; the row of bullets and shell scraps at the foot of my bed was a little longer. After the number had reached twenty-two, they told me that perhaps there were a few more in there, but they thought they’d better let them stay. My wounds had become septic, and it was necessary to give all attention to drainage and cure. It was about this time that everything, for a while, seemed to become hazy, and my memories got all queerly mixed up and confused. I recollect I conceived a violent dislike for a black dog that appeared from nowhere, now and then, and began chewing at my leg, and I believe I gave the nurse a severe talking to because she insisted on going to look on at the ball game when she ought to be sitting by to chase that dog away. And I was perfectly certain about her being at the ball game, because I saw her there when I was playing third base. It was at this time (on November 28, 1916, ten days after I had been wounded) that my father, in Lexington, received the following cablegram from the officer in charge of the Canadian records, in England: “Sincerely regret to inform you that Sergeant Alexander McClintock is officially reported dangerously ill in No. 5 General Hospital, from gunshot wound in left thigh. Further particulars supplied when received.” It appears that, during the time of my adventures with the black dog and the inattentive nurse, my temperament had ascended to the stage when the doctors begin to admit that another method of treatment might have been successful. But I didn’t pass out. The one thing I most regret about my close call is that my parents, in Lexington, were in unrelieved suspense about my condition until I myself sent them a cable from London, on December 15th. After the first official message, seemingly prepared almost as a preface to the announcement of my demise, my father received no news of me whatever. And, as I didn’t know that the official message had gone, I cabled nothing to him until I was feeling fairly chipper again. You can’t have wars, though, without these little misunderstandings.