Each tells his story. It depends on how sick they appear or how often they have been before his medical majesty in the past as to the result. The latter at least may work a day off, at the expense of a nauseating dose of castor oil, taken at once, and some lead and opium pills, consigned to the gutter as soon as the sick man is out of sight. The former probably gets M.&D., that is medicine and duty, which translated means, carry on, with perhaps a good rubbing of his back with a strong liniment. My corporal told me a story of two men who opened a can of bully beef and for four days left it standing on the parapet during hot weather. Then they ate it with the hope of getting ptomaine poisoning. Another chap is said to have feigned insanity by giving all his attention to snatching up every bit of paper he could find in the trenches or out of them, and studiously endeavoring to make the bits of paper into some important document. He carried out this apparently foolish search so long that at last he was pronounced insane and given his discharge from the forces. On receiving his discharge papers he studied them carefully as he walked away. Another soldier heard him murmur: "Why, that's the paper I have been searching for all the time." Deafness is one of the commonest complaints of a soldier who is scrimshanking. The soldier tells the M.O. that for some months past his hearing has been lessening and that at last he is so deaf that he cannot carry on. He claims that while on sentry duty or "standing to" in the front line he has already nearly shot one officer and three different men because he could not hear them giving him the password. The M.O. in a loud voice questions him as to his name, place of birth, age, and so on, and so on, keeping his face straight and his lips hidden, to avoid allowing the soldier, if really deaf, to read his lips. Gradually the voice of the officer is lowered, and the man who at first had difficulty hearing his loud tones, unconsciously, if faking, answers the lowered voice till he is answering to a voice that is almost a whisper. Then comes suddenly a change in the manner of the "croaker." He becomes stern and rebukes the man, ordering him forth to do his duty like the other men of his battalion, and not ever again to dare to come on parade with a plea of deafness, under a threat of marking him plain "DUTY," which means criming and a likelihood of twenty-eight days first field punishment.