Dr. Mapleton lifted his head. "That's just like everything in this country," he said irritably. "I send for a baker and get a missionary! Thank God, I'm not a heathen that I should want a missionary!" Dr. Hamlin laughed. "But I'm the baker," he said. "You, the baker!" repeated Dr. Mapleton. Dr. Hamlin explained how he had been forced into the baking business. "Then will you bake bread for our hospital? What we get is not fit to eat. Our poor invalids won't touch it; they can't. We're in a tight place." Dr. Hamlin stood with knitted brows. "You will, won't you?" said the physician, earnestly. Dr. Hamlin uttered a fateful "yes." One couldn't refuse such a plea as this! In a few minutes the contract was signed. He promised to furnish two hundred and fifty loaves a day. But as he left the hospital he looked around. Two hundred and fifty loaves a day! They would not go far if all these beds were to be filled by patients. It looked as though the whole British army were expected. Alas, the beds were all needed. First fifty a day, then a hundred a day, the soldiers were carried in from the hospital ships, sick, dying, with dreadful wounds. Dr. Hamlin could neither teach his Armenians nor dream about his college when he had six thousand, then twelve thousand loaves of bread to make each day. He thought of nothing but baking. The poor patients had almost no nursing, and his heart ached. He offered to organize a corps of nurses for the night when there was no one to take care of the helpless invalids, but he was refused by the brutal officers. Then one morning he went to the hospital and heard a strange piece of news. A soldier told him, his eyes almost popping from his head in his astonishment: "Fancy, Mr. Hamlin! Some _women_ have come to this hospital. Did you ever hear of such a dreadful and improper thing?" "What women?" asked Dr. Hamlin. "A Miss Florence Nightingale with a force of assistants." "Good for her!" said Dr. Hamlin. "It's time that somebody should come here and do something." That morning he kept his eyes wider open than ever. The Hamlin family were famous hero-worshipers; Cyrus's grandfather had named six of his boys for heroes. They were Africanus, for Scipio Africanus, Hannibal, Cyrus, Eleazer, Isaac, and Jacob, and the other three, one might mention incidentally, were Americus, Asiaticus, and Europus. Here, Dr. Hamlin saw, was a real live hero, in the bud at least. He watched Florence Nightingale moving quietly about in the scene of misery and horror. The poor lads spent no more lonely nights. Every want was attended to. The death-rate went steadily down. It was one of the great achievements of history, and he had a part in it; he baked the only bread Florence Nightingale would let her sick boys have.