minutes, and it would have been all over with us. We would have been crushed by the advancing hordes, trodden under into the mire. And then I heard a tramping, a tramping gradually growing louder, a tramping first challenging the roar of the battle, and then overwhelming it, drowning it, so that all sound had become one huge rhythmic tramp, tramp, tramp! I thought my eardrums would burst. And then I looked up and beheld the light reflected on their armor, and the sky filled with a huge glitter, and the rays of the sun shining through showers of arrows! And the enemy melted away before us; melted by the hundreds; by the thousands; by the tens of thousands; and those celestial hosts tramped upwards, tramped up that invisible pathway into the heavens, tramped out of sight!" (He stops.)

The Visitor (after a pause). And then?

The Surgeon. Then a bullet struck him, and he was unconscious until they brought him here.

The Visitor (after another pause; emphasizing the inconsistency). Tramping ghosts!

The Surgeon. Why not?

The Visitor (positively). Ghosts are noiseless.

The Surgeon (shrewdly). If you speak from experience—

The Visitor (nettled). I didn't say I believed in them.