He tried to rouse the wounded man, to pull him forward, to tow him like a barge along the beaten path in the wheat. But the man groaned and resisted. He was evidently in great pain, and Troy, whom a year's experience in ambulance work had enlightened, understood that he must either be carried away or left where he was. To carry him it was necessary to stand up, and the night was growing transparent, and the wheat was not more than waist high. Troy raised his head an inch or two and looked about him. In the east, beyond the wheat, a pallor was creeping upward, drowning the last stars. Any one standing up would be distinctly visible against that pallor. With a sense of horror and reluctance and dismay he lifted the wounded man and stood up. As he did so he felt a small tap on his back, between the shoulders, as if some one had touched him from behind. He half turned to see who it was, and doubled up, slipping down with the wounded soldier in his arms. XII Troy, burning with fever, lay on a hospital bed. He was not very clear where the hospital was, nor how he had got there; and he did not greatly care. All that was left of clearness in his brain was filled with the bitter sense of his failure. He had abandoned his job to plunge into battle, and before he had seen a German or fired a shot he found himself ignominiously laid by the heels in a strange place full of benevolent-looking hypocrites whose least touch hurt him a million times more than the German bullet. It was all a stupid agitating muddle, in the midst of which he tried in vain to discover what had become of Jacks, what had happened to the ambulance, and whether the old people and the wounded territorial had been heard of. He insisted particularly on the latter point to the cruel shaved faces that were always stooping over him, but they seemed unable to give him a clear answer--or else their cruelty prompted them to withhold what they knew. He groaned and tossed and got no comfort, till, suddenly opening his eyes, he found Jacks sitting by his bed. He poured out his story to Jacks in floods and torrents: there was no time to listen to what his friend had to say. He went in and out of the whole business with him, explaining, arguing, and answering his own arguments. Jacks, passive and bewildered, sat by the bed and murmured: "All right--all right" at intervals. Then he too disappeared, giving way to other unknown faces. The third night (some one said it was the third night) the fever dropped a little. Troy felt more quiet, and Jacks, who had turned up again, sat beside him, and told him all the things he had not been able to listen to the first day--all the great things in which he had played an unconscious part. "Battle of the Marne? Sure you were in it--in it up to the hilt, you lucky kid!"