"I think he will keep his word. Do not forget, Herr Lieutenant, that Tam brought down von Müller, the greatest airman that the Fatherland ever knew." "Von Müller!" The young man's face went a shade paler. The story of von Müller and his feud with an "English" airman and of the disastrous sequel to that feud, was common knowledge throughout Germany. Walking back to Command Headquarters, von Zeiglemann expressed his private views to his confidant. "If Tam can scare this money-bag back to Frankfurt, he will render us a service." "He asked me where I thought he would be safe--he is thinking of asking for a transfer to the eastern front," said Zeiglemann's assistant. "And you said--" "I told him that the only safe place was a British prison camp." "Please the good God he reaches there," said Zeiglemann piously, "but he will be a fortunate man if he ever lands alive from a fight with Tam. Do not, I command you, allow him to go up alone. We must guard the swine--keep him in the formation." Von Zeiglemann went up in his roaring little single-seater and ranged the air behind the German lines, seeking Tam. By sheer luck he was brought down by a chance Archie shell and fell with a sprained ankle in the German support-trenches, facing Armentiers. "A warning to me to leave Mahl to fight his own quarrels," he said as he limped from the car which had been sent to bring him in. There comes to every man to whom has been interpreted the meaning of fear a moment of exquisite doubt in his own courage, a bewildering collapse of faith that begins in uneasy fears and ends in blind panic. Von Mahl had courage--an airman can not be denied that quality whatever his nationality may be--but it was a mechanical valor based upon an honest belief in the superiority of the average German over all--friends or rivals. He had come to the flying service from the Corps of the Guard; to the Corps of the Guard from the atmosphere of High Finance, wherein men reduce all values to the denomination of the mark and appraise all virtues by the currency of the country in which that virtue is found. His supreme confidence in the mark evaporated under the iron rule of a colonel who owned three lakes and a range of mountains and an adjutant who had four surnames and used them all at once. His confidence in the superiority of German arms, somewhat shaken at Verdun, revived after his introduction to the flying service, attained to its zenith at the moment when he incurred the prejudices of Tam, and from that moment steadily declined. The deterioration of morale in a soldier is a difficult process to reduce to description. It may be said that it has its beginnings in respect for your enemy and reaches its culminating point in contempt for your comrades. Before you reach that point you have passed well beyond the stage when you had any belief in yourself.