They brought in the dead man. "H'm," said the Medical Officer, looking at him. "Cerebral hæmorrhage. This intense cold---- I was always rather afraid of a lesion. A nasty shock for you, Sister. Well, well, another one finished--very sad, very sad." An orderly brought Sister Braithwaite her share of the just arrived post. There was a letter from Ronald's mother. It enclosed one from the War Office. "Dear Madam," it ran. "It is regretted that no further details have come to hand regarding your son. Officially he is still posted as 'missing, believed killed.'" Sister Braithwaite shut herself in her cubicle, talked to the photograph with the vivid eyes, talked to it as primitive woman talks to the lover who has destroyed his rival. She reached out to the Other Side. NA NOS! (_A study of Serb infantry in battle, 1914_) There is no moon. In black darkness a long file of men stumbles up a stony gully. Precipitous rock-walls keep them to the bed of a vanished stream, where they trip in succession over the same loose boulders. Their curses are hushed instantly by voices not less authoritative because they bark in whispers. Wrapped in long sheepskin coats the figures pass like ghosts of an antique time, whose grimness is accentuated by the incongruity of modern rifles with fixed bayonets that glint under the myriad stars. Presently the head of the file halts in what seems a black pit, the edge of which cuts sharply against the star-powdered bluish darkness of the sky. Those behind arrive continuously, collect in the hollow, are formed into ranks by sergeants who bully _sotto voce_ like angry conspirators. The company commander is crawling on hands and knees up the wall of the hollow, which is not so precipitous as it appears in the darkness. The captain peers cautiously over the crest. He sees only blackness which rises all around him from an abyss that reflects no ray in its profundity, and blots out the stars high in the sky with irregular cones and shapeless masses of inky night. From those mountains a wind blows chilly on his face. He fixes his gaze upon a point in the blackness far across the gulf. The point is decided upon after careful reference to a phosphorescent compass in his hand. He stares at this blank darkness until it almost seems that he must be staring against closed lids.