"Home, Sweet Home," said the Colonel looking around the room. "It is the nearest thing we can get to it anyway, worse luck." They all threw their British warms and caps onto a large chair, flung their sam-brown belts on top of them and picking out their own respective easy chairs drew up before the fire, which was burning brightly in the French grate stove in the corner of the mess room, formerly the dining room of Madame Deswaerts. The whole side of the room facing the rose garden and pigeon cots was glassed in and the two huge French windows were, no doubt, a pleasant feature in the summer time; at present they admitted a great deal of the cold, damp air from outside. "Rawson," called the Colonel. Rawson a little black-haired Jew, the Doctor's batman and temporary mess cook, entered. "Yessir," said Rawson. "Put some more coal on that fire; it's as cold as hell in here," grumbled the Colonel. The fire was duly replenished while the Colonel took a cigarette from his case and opened his "Bystander." "Do you know how to cook that canned asparagus?" asked the Colonel as Rawson turned to leave the room. "No Sir," said Rawson. "Well how do you think you would cook it?" asked the Colonel. This was a poser; Rawson was evidently nonplussed. "Would you boil it, Sir?" he ventured when the silence had become oppressive. "You guessed right," and the Colonel deftly flicked a burned match up behind a picture of the local cure. "What would you do with the tough part of the stalks?" "I dunno, Sir." Rawson was stumped again. "Have you ever eaten asparagus?" asked the Colonel. "No, Sir," said Rawson, "but I've seen it in the stores." "Well, go and boil it for five minutes with some salt," ordered the Colonel, "and then serve dinner." "Yessir," said Rawson, retiring to the kitchen. "It beats hell," fussed the Colonel, "how ignorant that boy is; he hasn't a single ray of intelligence; he carries on just like a trained monkey; he never thinks, never." "Yes, he does," contradicted the Captain looking up from a New York Journal received that day, "I actually saw him thinking yesterday; I could almost see the wheels going around; in fact, I imagined I could hear them grating, so seldom had they been used. It was really one of the most fascinating things I ever saw; you couldn't describe it but you could act it. The Doc. saw it too. Wasn't it funny, Doc.?" "It was a marvel," said the Doctor. "I have always classed Rawson as belonging to the palaeolithic age and imagined the missing link to have about the same brain capacity as he has; since our experience yesterday I have come to the conclusion that Rawson is a 'throw back' and had normal ancestry. This is more apparent when we know he is never savage but on the contrary very gentle."