and led me unerringly through that riotous jungle of machinery.
He brought me by devious ways to a place he called "holy ground" — long, low outbuildings approached by narrow, wooden causeways, swept and re-swept by men shod in felt — a place this, where no dust or grit might be, for here was the magazine, with the filling sheds beyond. And within these long sheds, each seated behind a screen, were women who handled and cut deadly cordite into needful lengths as if it had been so much ribbon, and always and everywhere the same dexterous speed.
He led me, this soft-voiced, keen-eyed works-manager, through well-fitted wards and dispensaries, redolent of clean, druggy smells and the pervading odour of iodoform; he ushered me through dining halls long and wide and lofty and lighted by many windows, where countless dinners were served at a trifling cost per head; and so at last out upon a pleasant green, beyond which rose the great gates where