die,
and all the time every particle of manhood he possessed was telling him
where his duty lay.

If Nancy Tresize had promised Trevanion to be his wife, she must love
him, and if she loved him, the death of her lover would be like death
to her. Anyhow, it was for him to make the attempt.

He crept from his place of safety, and threw himself flat on the
ground, while the others, with whispered exclamations of surprise,
watched him.

Keeping his body as close as he could to the ground, he crawled
forward. When he had been a boy, he, like thousands of other English
boys, had played at fighting Indians, and the old trick of crawling
close to the ground served him well now; but it was painfully slow, and
every yard he took he expected to hear the whistle of bullets--to feel
the baptism of fire.

When he had crawled perhaps one hundred yards, a rifle shot rang out,
and he heard a bullet cut its way through the leaves of the trees in
the near distance. Was it aimed at him? He didn't know, but he did
know that the nearer he went to the enemies' lines, the greater chance
they would have of seeing him.

"Why should I go any further?" he asked himself. "It is a madman's
trick I am playing. No one but an idiot would take such a risk;
besides, it is useless--I can never reach him. Even if I get to the
spot Beel described, I may not find him, and then I shall have simply
thrown away my life for nothing." Then for the first time that day he
really felt what fear meant.

Since early morning he had been in the midst of the fray, now directing
his soldiers, now fighting hand-to-hand battles, but never once had he
felt fear; even when his comrades on his right hand and on his left had
fallen, he had not felt even a tremor. His nerves had been wrought up
to such a pitch that fear was almost impossible; rather he had known a
kind of mad joy in fighting. When in answer to the German charge the
English soldiers had rushed forward, bayonets fixed, to meet them, he
knew he had become almost a savage in his lust for blood. More than
once he had laughed aloud as slowly, amidst cries of pain, savage yells
of joy, and feverish passion, they had fought their way, inch by inch,
and driven the Germans back; but now he felt fear.

It was one thing to rush forward amidst the clash of arms and the
cheers of his comrades; it was another to crawl along like an Indian
savage, in the silence of the dying day. And for what purpose? To