"A very close relation," he returned laughingly. "I am his dearest friend; in fact—himself. And you—you are Mac—dear old Mac!" he cried, stretching out both hands to me in his impetuous, warm-hearted way. I could have hugged him, I was so glad to see him! "What a queer game is Life!" he exclaimed a moment later. "For years you and I have been shaken about, with many a jolt, in the dice-box of the world, and now, like two Jacks, we are once more tossed together upon the Table of Fate!" While we were chatting over old times, the nurse unwound his bandages. "I hope it doesn’t hurt too much?" I asked him, as I examined his wound preparatory to dressing it. "It’s a mere scratch," he returned lightly; "a piece of shrapnel through the flesh of the thigh; but the surgeon at the Field Ambulance thought I should come back to hospital for a week or two. Things are rather noisy around Ypres." "But what possessed you to join the R.A.M.C.?" I enquired. "You should be with the Canadians." He laughed. "Oh, you chaps were too long in coming over. I’d have lost three whole months of the war. I was in England when it broke out, and came over with the First Expeditionary Force." "You were in the retreat from Mons, then!" I exclaimed in envious admiration. "Every foot of it," he replied. "That _was_ a fight, you may well believe. But the Huns didn’t have it all their own way. I saw a strange scrap one day between a French and a German battalion. The Huns sprang suddenly out of an ambush and were upon the French with the bayonet before you could catch your breath. Taken by surprise, the ’poilus’ ran for all they were worth for about a quarter of a mile—and they are some sprinters too—the Huns following them, shouting like demons. Suddenly the French stopped—they must have been running to get their second wind—wheeled about, and with fixed bayonets charged back like a streak of forked lightning through the Germans. You never saw such a surprised and rattled bunch of Huns since you were born. If it hadn’t been so awful I could have shrieked with laughter. But the French weren’t satisfied with going through them once; they turned about and came back at them again, like a regiment of cavalry. The Huns seemed stupefied with amazement and terror; they fought like men in a daze, and very few ever got back to tell the story of the ’cowardly French who ran away’!" "We, too, have underestimated the French, I’m afraid," I said. "We are beginning to realise their possibilities as a fighting force, and the Germans aren’t yet awake to their strength and determination."