My father would talk in his matter-of-fact way of the hours of waiting before the actual commencement of a battle, after the troops had been paraded.

The mere anticipation of the suspense and the strain of those hours was a torture to me.

I foresaw the possibility of cowardice.

Then one evening, when my father had his old friends about him on one of his Crimean nights, two dreadful stories were told--one of an officer, the other of a surgeon, who had both shirked.

I was now confronted with the fact of cowardice.