geted and lolled from one side, to the other. It seemed to
him that he had waited hours for the signal to get over the trenches. He
tried to strike a match for his pipe; his hand was trembling furiously.
It occurred to him that after having passed through the gory awfulness
of six months' incessant fighting, he was beginning to lose his nerve.
He was no longer master of himself. He was afraid. Every man has the
instinct that prompts fear, for upon that instinct the whole foundation
of life-preservation is founded. But over and above this instinct,
common to all of us, O'Hagan had imagination--the graphic, vivid
imagination that always lurks in Irish blood. Is not the entire history
of the Celt a rejection of the things of this world for the Shadow and
the dream? Upon this basis of fear and imagination O'Hagan started to
build, building and building until he had created a grand structure of
blind terror which yielded a most exquisite torture to his mind.

A whistle sounded and a shudder traversed the men all down the trench.
The officer called to his men. He mounted the parapet and jumped over.
There was a sound like the rushing of a river as the regiment poured
itself over the trench. The men advanced slowly and dazedly. Now any
acute observer would note that the men were bewildered and had little
heart in the fight. Their faces worked; and they struggled to walk on,
but it seemed useless. The bullets were pattering all around and taking
heavy toll. Then a few yards in front a shrapnel shell kicked up the
mud. The German guns had found the range. Someone shouted out the fatal
words "Lie down." The regiment was soon hugging the earth, which was
about the best thing they could have done. Great showers of shrapnel
burst over them, and the bullets struck down on them in a continuous
shower. Some men rose to their feet, and the shrapnel withered them.
Suddenly one shell burst over O'Hagan, blotting out all around him in
smoke and dust, and brutally jerking his mind to fullest tension. This
shell fire was hell! With the crash imagination and fear began to work
together in his overworked brain--both at once in the queerest jumbling
manner. In a few moments O'Hagan was on his feet running away--racing as
if not merely for his life, but his soul.

When O'Hagan's brain cooled and his sight cleared he found himself in
the doorway of a little wrecked church. The German shells had gashed
and ripped the sides and roof, so that birds