The doctor, who knew me as well as I knew him, had been so absorbed with examining the wound that he had taken little notice of the soldier attached to it. Now he recognized me and greeted me heartily. “You’ve grown thin, Stark--and your clothes!” “I have been starved,” I said, “and I am ragged and dirty too. I need good food and a lot of it, so that I can get my strength back. As for dirt, I haven’t been traveling in Pullman cars or sleeping in first-class hotels, Doctor. I am satisfied to be here, dirt, rags and all. But don’t give that food the absent treatment.” “You will have to go on low diet for a while, I’m afraid,” said the doctor, “until the wound heals.” I growled some more, but it did no good. If Surgeon Williams failed to understand my views about diet, he at least did not slight the wound. He had made a “history of the case” and applied a new dressing, all within two hours; for was I not Captain Stark, and not merely “a case”? When I escaped that doctor, got some clean clothes, a shave, a hair cut, and a good dinner, I felt fit for anything, and wanted to see my comrades. They had heard of my return from Fritzland, and came clustering around me with many expressions of good will; and _my_, wasn’t I glad to see the boys that had stood by me so stoutly in the fight? The painful part of it was that there were so many absent ones who would never report for duty again. The boys were as glad to see me as I was them--for had we not fought side by side through thick and thin? And this gives a feeling of comradeship that can never be gained in any other way, one that can never be broken, and which soldiers who have stood by each other in danger alone can fully appreciate. “Shure,” said Pat Quinn--now a sergeant--saluting, “we give them Boches wan Hail Columbia drubbing, Captain!” “Yes,” I replied; “but I got ‘The Watch on the Rhine,’ and didn’t like it.” “Well,” said Sutherland, who had just returned to duty from a severe wound, “we can’t have all of it our own way, but we must try and get the best of the exchange of drubbings. If the Boches would only fight a fair fight we might forgive them, but some of our men were killed in that last fight by explosive bullets--the savages!” And it was true. In the heartiness of our greeting we forgot rank, and only remembered that we were comrades who had stood by each other in the pinch of battle. Muddy was a great favorite. “That little devil of a dog,” said Quinn, “knows too much for wan dog. Shure by carrying your lether, he did as much as any tin av us in that fight.”