To Coleheart's surprise, however, he was picked up and helped along by one of his comrades to a first-line dressing-station. Coleheart saw that his companion was Whitening. "You'll get into trouble," he said, feebly. "You're not supposed to fall out. You'll be court-martialled." "I don't care!" responded the other, fiercely. "My husband's just been killed. He was Corporal----" And before the astonished Coleheart could respond, "Whitening" had snatched up the rifle, which had previously formed a rough splint around Coleheart's leg, and was dashing back to the trenches. The surgeon in the dressing-station decided to amputate the injured leg, but Coleheart was obdurate. He was born with that leg, he said, and he would die with it. Patched up, he was soon afterwards put on a hospital ship, and finally arrived in London. "But what became of 'Whitening'?" I asked, curious to learn the end of the history. "Killed the same day," responded Coleheart. "It never got into the papers. The whole business was hushed up." VIII--STORY OF THE HERMIT OF YPRES All readers of Sir Walter Scott's novels will recollect Old Mortality, the itinerant antiquary, whose craze it was to clean the moss from gravestones and keep their letters and effigies in good condition. Private R. Walker, of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, told me the following story concerning a very similar character. You have probably heard how the Canadians have brought the spirit of the trapper to the trenches; of their patience in marking down their prey. The enemy never know what the Canadians will be about next, and for a wealth of reasons one imagines that to be opposite the Canadian trenches in Flanders must be a nerve-racking experience. The boys from the land of the Maple Leaf are particularly patient in sapping and mining. They burrow vertical shafts far under the depths at which they estimate the Germans will counter-mine; they destroy the enemy's galleries and, creating a series of craters, occupy them and connect them up with the nearest Canadian trenches. In these mining operations the Canadians have obtained a good deal of information concerning the enemy's moves from an old fellow they call "Gravestones." His chief occupation is the preservation of the rows of wooden crosses denoting the last resting place of the fallen. The old man's history is passing strange. He is a Belgian. His daughter, prior to the war, had taken the veil, but when the country was invaded the cloisters of most of the convents and monasteries of Belgium were deserted. The men took up arms; the women helped in the hospitals.