It was not without reason that Roger Dymond hesitated before he gave his answer, for nerves are difficult things to deal with. It is surprising, but it is true, that you never find a man who is afraid the first time he goes under fire. There are thousands who are frightened beforehand--frightened that they will "funk it" when the time comes, but when they see men who have been out for months "ducking" as each shell passes overhead they begin to think what brave fellows they are, and they wonder what fear is. But after they have been in the trenches for weeks, when they realise what a shell can do, their nerve begins to go; they start when they hear a rifle fired, and they crouch down close to the ground at the whistle of a passing shell. Thus had it been with Roger Dymond. At the beginning of the war he had enjoyed himself--if anyone could enjoy that awful retreat and awful advance. He had been one of the first officers to receive the Military Cross, for brilliant work by the canal at Givenchy; he had laughed and joked as he lay all day in the open and listened to the bullets that went "pht" against the few clods of earth he had erected with his entrenching tool, and which went by the high-sounding name of "head cover." And then, one day a howitzer shell had landed in the dug-out where he was lunching with his three particular friends. When the men of his company cleared the sandbags away from him, he was a gibbering wreck, unwounded but paralysed, and splashed with the blood of three dead men. Now, after months of battle dreams and mad terror, of massage and electrical treatment, he was faced with the question--"Do you feel quite fit for active service again?" He was tired to death of staying at home with no apparent complaint, he was sick of light duty with his reserve battalion, he wanted to be out at the front again with the men and officers he knew ... and yet, supposing his nerve went again, supposing he lost his self-control.... Finally, however, he looked up. "Yes, sir," he said, "I feel fit for anything now--quite fit." * * * * * Three months later the Medical Officer sat talking to the C.O. in the Headquarter dug-out. "As for old Dymond," he said, "he ought never to have been sent out here again. He's done his bit already, and they ought to have given him a 'cushy' job at home, instead of one of those young staff blighters"--for the M.O. was no respecter of persons, and even a "brass hat" failed to awe him. "Can't you send him down the line?" said the C.O. "This is no place for a man with neurasthenia. God! did you see the way his hand shook when he was in here just now?" "And he's a total abstainer now, poor devil," sighed the Doctor with pity, for he was, himself, fond of his drop of whisky. "I'll send him down to the dressing station to-morrow with a note telling the R.A.M.C. people there that he wants a thorough change."