But the master dream--one that seemingly never left me, I have to confess, was of a girl. Of course, a wonder girl. It seems that this dream was always hovering in my brain, that it was always recurring to displace the other dreams. This girl was of changeless aspect. She was blue-eyed, always blue-eyed. These eyes were always blessing me with the assurance that everything in the end was to come out right. Her mouth was a marvel of kindliness and tenderness. I suppose my fevered brain was simply evolving the ideal girl that had always been in my mind. At any rate, this girl was my angel then--the angel of the mud-hole, if you will, but she certainly was God-sent to me while my mind wandered and my body, without my will or direction, was putting up its fight for life. Even in such times as I came into possession of my senses, she was still only half-veiled from me. I could close my eyes and bring her vision back at will. I had my lucid moments right enough--startlingly clear mental periods when I realized the desperation of my plight, when I despaired of ever getting out of the wretched black wallow alive and when I had thought for food. Here I was not wholly bereft. Of course, going on such an expedition as had brought me into my present situation, I had forethought to carry emergency rations. I had in my pockets four biscuits and seven cakes of chocolate. My clothes were soon soaked through and through with the ooze of mud. The biscuits in one pocket were as mush, the chocolate cakes also and the biscuits had, because of the muddy water, turned the same color as the chocolate cakes. I was thankful for the softened condition of both. My wounded mouth was swollen and inflamed. I could hardly move my lips. I never could have broken between my torn gums a bite off a biscuit. But because they had been thoroughly wet I could suck at them and draw the bits of pasty food down and swallow them. And likewise with the chocolate. In these clear-headed moments I well enough knew myself to be the victim of fever and I was hoping and praying that if it ever left me I might find myself with strength enough to crawl out of my black bed of mud and make at least a fight to get back to my own, to protection, to the hospital and perhaps--yes, for all my wounds, for all the terrors and horrors I had been through, I did hope I would be able eventually to get back into the big fight. And this is not heroics. It is because I am a man and no man could have seen the crimes of the Germans I have seen and not want to fight the Boches as long as he could stand. Fortunately, thoughts of food had only come to me in my sane moments and I had therefore been able rigidly to adhere to my plan to eat sparingly--only a portion of a biscuit at a time, only a portion of a chocolate cake. On the morning of the third day I still had fragments of each left.