nd fear. Strange as it may seem, one is often more affected by seeing
horses struck than when men are killed. Somehow they seem so
particularly helpless.

It was during these days at O---- that Talbot discovered Johnson.
Johnson was one of his orderlies. Although it did not lie in the path
of his duty, he took the greatest delight in doing all sorts of little
odd jobs for Talbot. So unobtrusive he was about it all, that for some
time Talbot hardly noticed that some one was trying to make him
comfortable. When he did, by mutual agreement Johnson became his
servant and faithful follower through everything. The man was
perfectly casual and apparently unaffected by the heaviest shell-fire.
It is absurd to say that a man "doesn't mind shell-fire." Every one
dislikes it, and gets nervous under it. The man who "doesn't mind it"
is the man who fights his nervousness and gets such control of
himself that he is able to _appear_ as if he were unaffected. Between
"not minding it" and "appearing not to mind it" lie hard-won moral
battles, increased strength of character, and victory over fear.
Johnson had accomplished this. He preserved an attitude of careless
calm, and could walk down a road with shells bursting all around him
with a sublime indifference that was inspiring. Between him and his
officer sprang up an extraordinary and lasting affection.

The wretched night in the forge at last came to an end, and the next
morning we looked around for more comfortable billets. We selected the
cellar of a house in fairly good condition and prepared to move in,
when we discovered that we were not the first to whom it had appealed.
Two dead Germans still occupied the premises, and when we had disposed
of the bodies, we took up our residence. Here we stayed, going out
each day to find the best points from which to view No Man's Land,
which lay in front of the village. With the aid of maps, we planned
the best routes for the tanks to take when the battle should have
begun. Not a detail was neglected.

Then something happened to break the monotony of life. Just back of
the village one of our batteries was concealed in such a fashion that
it was impossible to find it from an aeroplane. Yet every day,
regularly, the battery was shelled. Every night under cover of the
darkness, the position was changed, and the battery concealed as
cleverly as before, but to no avail. The only solution was that some
one behind our lines was in communication