There was no apprenticeship for Sheila in the hospital whither she was sent. The chief of the surgical staff gave a cursory glance over the letter she had brought from the San, signed by the three leading surgeons in that state; then he looked hard at her. "Hm ... m! And strong into the bargain. You're a godsend, Miss O'Leary." Before the day had gone she was in charge of one of the operating-rooms; by midnight they had fifty-three major operations. And the days that followed were much the same; they passed more like dreams than realities. There were a few sane, clear moments when Sheila realized that the sky was very blue or leaden gray; that the sun shone or did not shine, that the wards were cheery places and that all about her were faces consecrated to unselfish work or to patient suffering. These were the times when she could stop for a chat with the boys or write letters home for them. But for the most part she was being hurled through a maelstrom of operations and dressings with just enough time between to snatch her share of food and sleep. Her enthusiasm was unbounded for the marvelous efficiency of it all. She could never have believed that so many delicate operations could have been done in so few hours, that wounds could heal with such rapidity, that nerves could rebound and hearts come sturdily through to go about their business of keeping their owners alive. And every boy brought to her room was a fighting chance; but the fight was up to her and the surgeons, and they fought as archangels might to restore a new heaven on a befouled earth. Life had always seemed full and worth while to her. Now it seemed a super-life, shorn of everything petty and futile. "War may be hell; very likely it is for those who make it; but for us who do the patching afterward it's like the Day of Creation. I feel as if I'd put new souls into mended bodies." And the gruff, overtired chief who heard her smiled and mumbled to himself, "Those of us who survive will all have new souls; old ones have atrophied and dropped off." Fall was slow in coming. Instead of settling down to trench hibernating as had been the custom for three years, the Entente kept to its periodic attacks, pushing the enemy back farther and still a little farther, so that trenches were no longer the permanent abiding-places they had been in the past. Just as every one was prophesying the numbing of hostilities until spring, the rumor spread of Foch's final drive. On the heels of the rumor came the drive itself. Hospitals were taxed to their utmost; surgeons and nurses worked for days with a maximum of four hours' sleep a night. In Sheila's hospital Anzacs, Territorials, poilus, Americans, Tommies, and Zouaves poured in indiscriminately. Mattresses covered every square inch on the floor and canvas was stretched in the yard over many more. The number of operating-tables gave out at the beginning and they used stretchers, boards--anything that could hold a wounded man.