nning of the least of the worst. If it had fell in the trench,
now, and mucked up half a dozen men, there'd have been something to
squeal about. That's the sort o' thing that breaks a man up--your own
mates that was talking to you a minute afore, ripped to bits and torn
to ribbons. I've seen nothing left of a whole live man but a pair o'
burnt boots. I've seen--" He stopped abruptly and shivered a little.
"I'm not going to talk about it," he said. "I think about it and see it
too often in my dreams as it is. And, besides," he went on, "I didn't
duck that time, because I've learnt enough to know it's too late to
duck when the shell bursts a dozen yards from you. I'm not so much
afraid of dying, either. I've got to die, I've little doubt, before
this war is out; I don't think there's a dozen men in this battalion
that came out with it in the beginning and haven't been home sick or
wounded since. I've seen one-half the battalion wiped out in one
engagement and built up with drafts, and the other half wiped out in
the next scrap. We've lost fifty and sixty and seventy per cent. of our
strength at different times, and I've come through it all without a
scratch. Do you suppose I don't know it's against reason for me to last
out much longer? But I'm not afraid o' that. I'm not afraid of the
worst death I've seen a man die--and that's something pretty bad,
believe me. What I'm afraid of is myself, of my nerve cracking, of my
doing something that will disgrace the Regiment."

The man's nerves were working now; there was a quiver of excitement in
his voice, a grayer shade on his cheek, a narrowing and a restless
movement of his eyes, a stronger twitching of his lips. More shells
crashed sharply; a little along the line a gust of rifle-bullets swept
over and into the parapet; a Maxim rap-rap-rapped and its bullets spat
hailing along the parapet above their heads.

Halliday caught his breath and shivered again.

"That," he said--"that is one of the devils we've got to face
presently." His eyes glanced furtively about him. "God!" he muttered,
"if I could only get out of this! 'Tisn't fair, I tell ye, it isn't
fair to ask a man that's been through what I have to take it on again,
knowing that if I do come through, 'twill be the same thing to go
through over and over until they get me; or until my own sergeant
shoots me for refusing to face it."

Everton had listened in amazed silence--an understanding utterly beyond
him. He knew