The excitement and the reaction was apparently too much for me. I was sick and prostrated. In this condition I was attended by our surgeon, who said briefly, “It’s the gas. I have been attending similar cases since the men have recrossed the river.” Then he became preoccupied in his own professional diagnosis, as though there had never been neither a Von Rucker or a Jonathan Nickerson. I did not recover under his treatment, but grew worse and worse under the poisonous influence of German gas. This, the surgeon told me, was often the case with a new gas which the enemy were using; that sometimes its effects were but little noticed at first and afterward became fatal! I was under the best and most tyrannical care--a slave to the scientific theories of a doctor, and my readers know how well I loved that. I was surprised to learn, later, that Captain Von Rucker had been seen in Colonel Burbank’s office in conversation with him and the division general. “Possibly,” suggested my informant, “he was allowed to explain his former presence within our lines in citizen dress--but!” When I was allowed to call at the ward where my friend, Chaplain John, was confined, I met with a surprise that drove all other thoughts out of my mind. Emily Grant was a Red Cross nurse there! I was now willing to be sick for an indefinite time if I could only be in that ward; but that ward was for the wounded, and I was not supposed to be so afflicted--but I was not so sure of that. I was placed in a ward where Dr. Rich was in charge, as a specialist in gas poison. I have no doubt that he understood my case, though other things engrossed my thoughts. I gave him a clear field for thought and speculation, while _my_ thought and attention were directed to other matters. Emily visited me each day, and expressed great sympathy with my case; in fact I appeared to be, in that hospital, no longer an individual but an “interesting case.” We talked however, about my friend, Lieutenant Nickerson, and tried so hard to account for his desertion--besides other matters--where I did so much more thinking than talking, that Chaplain John, I think, enviously, called it a case of close-communion. Even a good man tries sometimes to be too funny, as children do. In two weeks I was pronounced cured. I can not say I was entirely pleased to be cured so quickly; for I was becoming intensely interested in scientific nursing. CHAPTER XIX THE GERMAN PEACE STORM It was currently reported that the Germans were about to launch a new attack. Anticipating, in advance, a decisive victory for their arms, they designated the contemplated attack “a peace storm.” Whatever may have been the feelings of our allied soldiers regarding this impending “drive,” the Americans were full of confidence.