What was more serious was this. The two incidents had revived, in a most malignant form, his old distrust of his own competence. I found that he was brooding over this--accusing himself, quite wrongly, I think, of being responsible for the death of seven men. He had bungled the scouting; he had recklessly attracted attention to the party, and Trower, not he, had paid for it. He had moved four men into a bay where four others already were, and six of them had been killed. I tried hard to persuade him, not quite honestly, that he had done absolutely the right thing. In scouting, of all things, I told him, a man _must_ take chances; and the matter of the two whizz-bangs was sheer bad luck. It was no good; he was a fool--a failure. Unconsciously, the Colonel encouraged this attitude. For, thinking that Harry's nerve might well have been shaken by his first experience, he would not let him go out on patrol again on our next 'tour' in the line. I think he was quite mistaken in this view, for the boy did not even seem to realize how narrow his own escapes had been, so concerned was he about his lost men. Nor did this explanation of the Colonel's veto even occur to him. Rather it confirmed him in his distrust of himself, for it seemed to him that the Colonel, too, must look upon him as a bungler, a waster of men's lives.... All this was very bad, and I was much afraid of what the reaction might be. But there was one bright spot. So far he only distrusted his military capacity; there was no sign of his distrusting his own courage. I prayed that that might not follow. V