A little later I stepped into the death chamber in a little house apart from the hospital. It was cold, wet, and smelled strongly of disinfectant, just as such places should, and in a dim, small room lighted by two candles, upon a snowy white altar made by the nuns, there he lay on a bier of the purest linen beautifully embroidered, whiter even than the pallor of his features and hands, and as I came near him the only color in the room was the brilliant touch of red and silver in his _Légion d'Honneur_ medal, which was pinned over his heart. His peaceful expression assured me he was happy at last, and made me realize that this is about the only happiness left for all these poor young chaps I see marching over these roads in companies for the trenches, where their only shelter is the sky and their only rest underground in dug-outs. When they go into the trenches they have a slim chance of coming out whole again, and they pass along the road in companies with jovial spirits, singing songs and laughing as though they were going to a picnic. I see them come back often, too; they are still smiling but nearly always in smaller numbers. What can they have in view when they see their numbers slowly but surely dwindling! I marvel at their superb courage! LUKE C. DOYLE [Illustration: WHAT NIGHT TRIPS WITHOUT LIGHTS SOMETIMES MEAN] [Illustration: THE DANGERS OF THE ROAD] _Perils of a Blizzard_ The other night, just as I was going to crawl in, three _blessés_ arrived from the trenches, another was down the road in a farmhouse waiting for the _médecin chef_; he was too badly wounded to go farther. They asked me to take the men to the hospital at Krût, which is back over the mountains twenty miles, and of course I said I would. I dressed again (I hated to because it was warm in the little log shack and it had begun to rain outside); I lit my lantern, and went out to the shelter where the cars were, got my tank filled with gas, and my lights ready to burn when I could use them. It was so black one could see nothing at all. We put two of the _blessés_ on stretchers and pushed them slowly into the back of the car; the other sat in front with me. We did this under the protection of the hill where the _poste de secours_ is located. When one goes fifty yards on the road beyond the station there is a valley, narrow but clear, which is in full view of the trenches, and it is necessary to go over this road going and coming. In the daytime one cannot be seen because the French have put up a row of evergreens along it which hides the road. I started and proceeded very carefully, keeping my lantern under a blanket, and we soon arrived at the house where the other _blessé_ was waiting for the doctor. It was a typical French farmhouse, little, old, and dirty inside, and white outside. I pushed in the door and stepped down into the flagstone kitchen. On the floor lay the _chasseur_ on a stretcher, his face pale under the lamplight from the table.