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Everything looks more hopeful to-night, but nothing can recall four lost days. During the night Scott turned out two or three times to find the weather slowly improving, and at 8 o'clock on December 9 they started upon a most terrible march to Camp 31. The tremendous snowfall had made the surface intolerably soft, and the half-fed animals sank deeper and deeper.
Beyond, a town without lights, without a station, without a milkshop, without a meat shop, without sheets, without blankets, crockery, cooking pans, or locks upon the doors. A population half-fed and poor. A sky black as ink and liquid as a river.
They were the sweepings from half-fed middle Europe, born with raw nerves; and under the sudden stress of danger, and the absence of some strong man to thrust discipline on them, they became practically maniacs. They were beyond speech, many of them. They yammered at the boats which came to their relief, with noises like those of scared beasts.
Flesh and blood gets wearied wi' so much work; why should factory hands work so much longer nor other trades? Just ask 'em that, Barton, will ye?" Barton was saved the necessity of answering, by the entrance of Mrs. Davenport, the poor widow he had been so kind to. She looked half-fed, and eager, but was decently clad.
He told how he had begun life an orphan lad without money and without friends able to help him; how he had lived as the slaves of the meanest master lived; how his day's work was from sixteen to eighteen hours long, and yielded him only enough black bread to keep him in a half-fed condition; how his faithful endeavors finally attracted the attention of a good blacksmith, who came near knocking him dead with kindness by suddenly offering, when he was totally unprepared, to take him as his bound apprentice for nine years and give him board and clothes and teach him the trade or "mystery" as Dowley called it.
I have often lain upon straw, and should oftener, had I not known some French, which I find very useful; though I was obliged the other day to speak Latin for a good dinner. We send for everything we want to the priest. That summer, when the king arrived with his son the Duke of Cumberland, the British and Hanoverian army was reduced to 37,000 half-fed men.
I am Belgian, and have no manners, you see." And he smiled. "If you like," said Noel. "I thank you very much:" He shifted his easel, and began to draw. She felt flattered, and a little fluttered. He was so pale, and had a curious, half-fed look, which moved her. "Have you been long in England?" she said presently. "Ever since the first months of the war." "Do you like it?"
Of what use was the machinery by which the American farmer could produce a dozen times as much food as his grandfather when there were more cases of starvation and a larger proportion of half-fed and badly fed people in the country than ever before, and hordes of homeless, desperate vagabonds traversed the land, begging for bread at every door?
Now and then a suttler's tent displayed all the luxuries and dainties a soldier's heart could wish for. All this fabulous wealth of provisions and clothing looked to the half-fed, half-clothed Confederates like the wealth of the Indies. The soldiers broke over all order and discipline for a moment or two and helped themselves.
There were some doctors who ignored the irony of medical techniques being taught to cure nonnutritional disease, when everybody was half-fed, or less. They approved of Calhoun. They even approved of Murgatroyd when Calhoun explained his function. He was, of course, a Med Service tormal, and tormals were creatures of talent.
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