It was a busy time again after Balaklava; she had barely time to think, scarcely time to rest. Yet ever and always, when her mind travelled beyond the immediate present, those words with which Dr. Forsyth had replied to her story came back to remembrance-- "People who play Providence ought not to wonder." Was he right, she wondered, and then was ashamed of her own wondering. "You will have to rest a little more," said the doctor to her one day when she had been helping him. "You were quite wobbly just now. You will be of no use, you know, unless you pull yourself together." And he narrowed his eyes perplexedly. "You are not living in the present somehow--you're reaching out to the future. Why?" She laughed. "Why should I--what can the future hold for me! I will take a blue pill." He grunted dissatisfaction, but was too busy to say more. Yet what he said was true. She began to catch herself wondering, wondering. The present was all-engrossing, of course; how could it be anything else when she could do what she could do for the poor lads?--his poor lads, who were so brave, so cheery. And then her mind would become vagrant, and she would wake up from dreams with a start. It was one day just before Inkerman, the 10th of November, that Dr. Forsyth came to her and said: "I want you. It's over at the cavalry hospital." His eyes seemed to her stranger than ever, and when she came out of her tent to join him he glanced at her, then said brusquely: "You've forgotten to put on that diamond brooch of yours--the P.P. one. Don't you remember when the sun glints on it, it's useful?" It was true. Often and often the eyes that had been asked to fix their gaze on it had become full of dreams, and then slept. "Stupid of me," she replied lightly. "I'll put it on!" CHAPTER X The Cavalry Hospital was a little way out of the town, a quaint old place with oleanders and orange trees set in tubs outside its white verandahs. As they drove thither Dr. Forsyth told her something of the case in which he wanted her help. It was a prisoner, presumably an officer, but he refused name or rank. He had been found two days after the battle, lying, with one leg smashed to bits, under his dead horse in a little ravine. How he had lived was a marvel, for he was quite an old man; but, not only had he done so, he had also retained consciousness, and had addressed those who found him in perfect English, congratulating them courteously on their marvellous exploit, and saying he was proud to have crossed swords with them. A game old fellow, worthy of his hospital nickname "The General." He had actually begged, before they moved him, that someone would be good enough to search in the holster of the dead horse beside him for a gold snuffbox which he had been unable to reach, and the lack of which had, he asserted, been his greatest discomfort.