"You're all right, my boy. Go treat yourself to a cup of cocoa, and a good, thick slice of bread and raspberry jam--raspberry, remember--and to-morrow you can report to your battalion medical officer."

"What!" exclaimed the man. "Doctor, I can't go up again. I'm not fit to go up."

"Oh, yes, you can, my boy. You'll be in good fighting trim to-morrow.

You'll see! You'll see! Come back here some day, perhaps, with a V. C."

Thereupon the man began to swear violently.

"Here, none of that," said the doctor sharply, "or up you go to-night."

A grin ran around the dressing station, in which none joined more heartily than the first shell-shock man, waiting to be conveyed down the line.

"They don't get by the old man often, nowadays," was Dr. Gregg's comment.

"You don't often get cases like this, though, do you?" enquired Barry.

"Not often. We have passed through this dressing station some thousands of cases, and we may have had eight or ten malingerers. But this is not all sham. There is a strong mixture of hysteria and suggestion with the sham. A chap with a highly organised temperament gets buried by a shell.

That is a terrific nerve shock. He sees two or three chaps blown to bits. Another nerve shock. Now he has heard about shell shock as a result of a similar experience. Immediately the suggestion begins to work and the man discovers in himself the well known symptoms of genuine shell shock, and, begad! I don't wonder. What we have just given him is part of the treatment for hysteria--a little nerve tonic. A good sleep may put him all right by to-morrow morning. The chances are, however, that the O. C. will send him down for a few days' rest and change. If so, the chap will be as happy as a clam. The boys will rag him half to death down there, so that he will be keen to get back again, and the chances are may get his V. C. Oh, we all get scared stiff," laughed Gregg. "We are none of us proud about here. That hero stuff that you read about in the home papers, we don't know much about. We just 'carry on'."

"By Jove, Gregg! That's all right, but to just 'carry on' in this business, it seems to me, calls for some pretty fine hero stuff."

"Well, we don't call it so," said Gregg. "Now I'll see about your ambulance. I believe there's one about ready to go. I think I can find a place for you and your friend, and it will save you a long walk."

They came away from the old mill with mingled feelings. Barry had to a certain extent recovered from his shock, and had himself somewhat firmly in hand. Cameron was still silent and obviously shaken.

It was grey dawn when they arrived at the camp, physically weary, nervously exhausted, and sick at heart. Barry wakened Hobbs, who greeted them with the news that the battalion was under orders to go up that night. By his own state Barry was able to gauge that of his friend Cameron. The experiences of the last ten hours had been like nothing in his previous life. The desolation wrought by war upon the face of the country, upon the bodies of men, upon their souls, had sickened and unnerved him; and this he remembered was an experience of only a brief ten hours. He was conscious of a profound self-distrust and humiliation, as he thought of those other men, those medical officers, with their orderlies, the ambulance drivers, those wounded soldiers. How could they endure this horror, day in and day out, for weeks and for months? In a few hours he would have to meet his fellow officers and the men. They could not fail to read in his face all this that he carried in his heart.

By his grey, haggard face he knew that the same horror and fear had gone deep into his friend's soul. There came to him the sudden thought that Cameron, too, must meet his fellow officers, and must endure their searching chaff, and that he would reveal himself to his undoing; for no man can ever live down in his battalion the whisper that he is a "quitter." That very night Cameron would be forced to lead up his platoon into the front line, and must lead them step by step over that same Vlammertinghe road, where the transports were nightly shelled. In the presence of any danger soever, he must not falter. When the shells would begin to fall, he knew well how the eyes of his men would turn to their leader and search his very soul to see of what quality he was.

Far better a man should die than falter. He had not failed to notice the startled look in Cameron's eyes when Hobbs blurted out his news. Some way must be found for the bracing up of the nerve, the steadying of the courage of his friend.

"Come in with me, Cameron," he said, standing at the door of his hut.

"I'm dead beat and so are you. We'll have coffee and some grub, and then sleep for a couple of hours until reveille."

Cameron hesitated. The thing he most longed for at that moment was to be alone.

"Come on!" insisted Barry. "Hobbs will have a fire going, and hot coffee in ten minutes. Come on, old chap. I want you to."

He threw his arm around Cameron's shoulder and dragged him in. The boy dropped onto Barry's cot, and, as he was, boots and coat on, was asleep before the coffee was ready. His boyish face, with its haggard look, struck pity to Barry's heart, and recalled his father's words, "These boys need their mothers." If ever a lad needed his mother, it was young Cameron, and just in that hour.

He woke the boy up, gave him his coffee, had Hobbs remove his boots, made him undress and covered him up in his blankets. Then, taking his own coffee, he lay down on Hobbs' bed.

"Harry," he said, "give us every minute of sleep you can. Wake us just one-half hour before reveille with coffee and everything else good you can rustle, and, Harry, waken me before Mr. Cameron."

When he lay down to sleep he made an amazing discovery--that his own horror and fear and self-distrust had entirely passed away. He felt himself quite prepared to "carry on." How had this thing come to pass?

His physical recuperation by means of coffee and food? This doubtless in part, but only in part. In his concern for his friend he had forgotten himself, and in forgetting himself he had forgotten his fear. It was an amazing discovery.

"Thank the good God," he said. "He never forgets a fellow, and I won't forget that."

He woke to find Hobbs at his side, with coffee, toast and bacon, and on the floor beside his cot his tub awaiting him--the tub being a rubber receptacle exactly eighteen inches in diameter.

He hurried through his dressing, and his breakfast, all the while Cameron lying like a dead man, and with almost a dead man's face.

Barry hated to waken him, but reveille was but a bare thirty minutes off, and he had an experiment to work upon his friend.

"Bring the coffee, Harry. Not the bacon, yet," he ordered.

"Hello, Cameron, old boy! Wake up."

Cameron rolled over with a groan and opened his eyes, still dull and heavy with sleep.

"Here you are. Pipe this down your tunnel and look lively, too. You have got thirty minutes--twenty-five, really--to reveille, and you have your toilet to perform--shave, massage, manicure and all the rest--so go to it. Here's your tub. You can't get into it, but soap yourself over, and Hobbs will sluice you with a pail or two outside."

"Why all this Spartan stuff? It's awfully cold. I think I'll content myself with a nose rub this morning."

"Get out of bed, and be quick about it," commanded Barry, "unless you'd rather take your tub where you are."

So saying he jerked the clothes clear off the cot, threatening Cameron with the tub. Cameron sprang up, stripped, soaped himself over, groaning and shivering the while; then stood outside in the open, while Hobbs administered the order of the bath, and after a vigorous rub, came in glowing.

"By jingo! That's bully! It's a pity a fellow can't always feel just how bully it is before he takes it."

"Na-a-w then! a little snap!" ordered Barry, in attempted imitation of the inimitable Sergeant Major Hackett. "A little speed, ple-ease! That's better. I've seen worse--not often!"

And so he rattled on through Cameron's dressing and shaving operations.

"Now then, 'Obbs, a little Delmonico 'ere. Shove this bacon against your fice, Cameron."

"What about yours, sir?" said Cameron, as he sat down to the luxuries which somehow Hobbs had "rustled."

"Had it, you slacker." Then with a swift change of voice and manner he added: "Listen to me, Cameron. I'm going to have my prayers. You won't bother me any, and if you don't mind I'll do them out loud. Don't you stop eating, though. Hobbs, stop your wandering around there and sit down and listen." Barry took his Bible.

"Cameron," he said, "one comfort in reading the Bible to a chap with a father like yours is that you know all about the thing already--context, historical references and theological teaching--therefore, no need of comment. Also you have a good imagination to see things. Turn on the juice while I read. Hobbs, you waken up, too."

Then he began to read the vivid words which picture as in miniature etchings the life stories of the heroes of Faith who in their day held their generation steady and pointed the way to duty and victory. As he read his face became alight, his dark eyes glowed, his voice thrilled under the noble passion of the words he read. Then he came to this stately peroration:

"And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon," and so on through the list of heroes, "Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, (of whom the world was not worthy). Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."

Both reader and hearers were swept along upon the tide of dramatic passion. They were themselves a part of the great and eternal conflict there pictured; they, too, were called upon to endure the cross.

Cameron had forgotten his breakfast, and with his kindling eyes fastened upon the reader's face, was listening to the noble music of the thrilling words.

Barry closed his book and laid it down.

"Great, eh! Wonderful company! All the finest and the best of the war's heroes are in it. Now, then, prayer--" He dropped on his knees, Cameron and Hobbs following his example.

It was a prayer chiefly of thanksgiving for those who in their day and in the face of anguish and terror and death had kept the faith; of thanksgiving, too, for all who in this present day of sacrifice in the home land and of sacrifice upon the field of battle were keeping that same faith for the Empire and for this same sacred cause of humanity.

The prayer closed with a simple petition that they in the battalion might be found worthy of a humble place in that great company.

As they were repeating together the prayer "Our Father," the notes of the reveille sounded shrilly over the camp.