‘Have they gone?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Ay,’ said Moir; ‘but ye’re no’ safe yet. If yere Gairman friends arena’ drooned, they’ll be in jail the morn.’ ‘Then they’ll think I gave them away.’ ‘It’s verra probable,’ Moir agreed. ‘For a’ that, ye’ll be in Carlisle by then to enlist in the Borderers.’ There was silence for a moment, and then Euphie said ‘It’s the only way, Jimmy. It’s your chance of winning back.’ ‘He’ll tak’ it,’ Moir remarked grimly. ‘If he doesna, he leaves here in chairge o’ the polis.’ Then he turned to the lad. ‘I’ll waken ye when it’s time. Dinna’ keep yere mither lang.’ He went back to the kitchen, and by and by Janet came in alone. Her eyes were wet, but she put her hand on Moir’s shoulder. ‘I’m thinking ye found the right way, David,’ she said. ‘He’ll gang.’ HAROLD BINDLOSS. _ON NIGHT DUTY._ It was a large base hospital in a large and dirty town. South Country men grew frank with disgust when they saw the pall of fog that hung for a fortnight outside the windows, yet things were little better when the fog cleared and the great buildings stood stark in their black ugliness. Yet the night nurses would linger at the corridor windows on their way down to the dining-room. There was the glamour of night on the big city, mighty buildings silhouetted against a sky of dark luminous blue, towers that divided the stars, and far below in the street the ruby and topaz lights of the road-menders, with the glowing brazier of the night-watchman. And then dawn came with its chilling wind and its grey cheerless light that discovered, without love or pity, the sordid things of town—the dirty canal, the barges, the heaps of timber, the ugly money-making warehouses and factories. All this we saw—a world pallid and cold, with none of the genial glow of noontide. The hospital never failed to charm me at night. Its interior aspect had a beauty of dim wards and red subdued lights over the ‘dug-outs,’ where a sister or nurse sat in charge. The long rows of white beds disappeared into the darkness, and the men in them had that pathos—unreal in some cases—of the sleeping and the helpless. At night they were all children—children who talked pitifully in their sleep of Germans and trenches and ghastly things beyond our ken. They called sometimes a woman’s name and professed next morning a guileless ignorance of her existence. It was a hushed and mysterious world, where one whispered and walked stealthily, and yet where much was told and where life seemed simpler and more genuine than by day when the little tin gods were all awake. At that time I saw most of the mental ward, the most pathetic place in any hospital. Sleep was an unwilling visitor there, except to the orderlies, who, in the intervals of card-playing and button-cleaning, relapsed into the attitudes of the seven sleepers.