“Poor old ------!” he heard one of them say. “Shot through the heart! He was a good officer, though a surly fellow. I’m sorry he’s dead.” The ------ they spoke of was himself. “Shot through the heart--a good officer--a surly fellow--dead!” He knew. Knowledge sometimes comes more slowly. He was “dead.” “Just my luck!” was his instinctive thought. Another shell burst behind him with a shattering report. Suddenly he saw before him a face that riveted his attention. It was a malignant, an insolent face. Then it changed into the face of his enemy, the German back in England whom he hated. “So it’s you, is it?” he asked. The spectre made no answer, but changed its shape again. This time it was like the woman whom my friend had hated himself for liking. “You, too!” he said, impatiently. Again the spectre changed countenance. It was like a servant whom my friend had cursed once too often, and who had left him the year before. “Are you, too, dead?” he asked; but the face before him had now resumed its original appearance. It was merely a malignant, insolent face, resembling nobody in particular. “What are you, anyway?” my friend demanded; but still there was no answer. The eye of the spectre interested him--the left eye. As he gazed at it, the eye gradually enlarged until it seemed the size of a target in a shooting-gallery. The iris, of a peculiar greenish-blue, was in the very middle of the eye, so that the white showed all round. The black pupil stared at him with its concentrated malice--a pupil large as a saucer. “Why do you do that?” demanded my friend; but the eye still made no answer. Then it vanished. A troop of hateful shades came in its place, ugly shades, some human, some subhuman. Another shell burst nearby, and the shades began to dance. They caught at him and whirled him around with them, around and around until he was dizzy. Then suddenly they stopped, and each and all of them changed into the form of the German back in England whom my friend had hated. Then another group of mad beings mingled with them. They also changed suddenly--there were a dozen duplicates of the woman whom my friend had hated himself for liking, and they and the duplicates of his enemy caught one another’s hands and kissed each other. Sick, revolted, my friend wished himself away, and he was away. He was over among the soldiers of the German army across the plain. He heard the sounds of the language he disliked. “What the devil!” he thought, and the devil stood before him, hoofs, horns and tail complete. “Hadn’t thought of me before, had you?” sneered the evil being. My friend was hurt and bewildered by the appearance, for it looked, with all its unlovely accessories, so like himself. “Will you, too, change form in a moment?” he asked. “Oh, no! I change slowly. I only change as you change.” “What do you mean?” “You only can change me.” “Change, then!” said my friend. But the demon remained as before.