Besides, there is a great feeling of expectation and hope, for there is to be a convoy in the morning and they are all to be sent down to the base--all except the men who are too ill to be moved and the two men who have died in the night, whose beds are shut off by red screens. The "cot cases" are lifted carefully on to stretchers, their belongings are packed under their pillows, and they are carried down to the ambulances, while the walking cases wander about the wards, waiting for their turn to come. They look into their packs for the fiftieth time to make sure they have left nothing; they lean out of the windows to watch the ambulance roll away to the station; they stop every orderly who comes along to ask if they have not been forgotten, or if there will be room for them on the train; they make new acquaintances, or discover old ones. One man meets a long-lost friend with a huge white bandage round his neck. "Hullo, you poor devil," he says, "how did you get it in the neck like that? was it a bullet or a bit of a shell?" The other swears, and confesses that he has not been hit at all, but is suffering from boils. For, going down to the base are wounded and sick of every sort--men who have lost a limb, and men who have only the tiniest graze; men who are mad with pain, and men who are going down for a new set of false teeth; men with pneumonia, and men with scabies. It is only when the boat leaves for England that the cases can be sorted out. It is only then that there are signs of envy, and the men whose wounds are not bad enough to take them back to "Blighty" curse because the bullet did not go deeper, or the bit of shrapnel did not touch the bone. * * * * * It is a wonderful moment for the "Tommies" when they reach their convalescent hospital in England. Less than a week ago many of them were stamping up and down in a slushy trench wondering "why the 'ell there's a bloomin' war on at all." Less than a week ago many of them never thought to see England again, and now they are being driven up to the old Elizabethan mansion that is to be their hospital. As the ambulance draws up outside the porch, the men can see, where the hostess used to welcome her guests of old, the matron waiting with the medical officer to welcome them in. One by one they are brought into the oak-panelled hall, and a nurse stoops over them to read their names, regiments, and complaints off the little labels that are fastened to their tunic buttons. As they await their turns, they snuff the air and sigh happily, they talk, and wink, and smile at the great carved ceiling, and forget all they have gone through in the joy of that splendid moment.