The One Who Went Away
"That 'll do. Perhaps you don't. Only bring no more fairy tales here. I won't have 'em. Understand?"
But in the morning a new complication rose. Ibraheem hunted up Merritt, an uneasy scowl on his dark face, and told him that the men absolutely refused to enter the trenches. The workman's tale had done its business. They were afraid, they acknowledged frankly; they would do anything under heaven to please their master, whom they loved as they loved their fathers and their mothers, but enter the accursed city and its devil-haunted tombs, they would not. Merritt saw that unless he played his cards with care, he would have a mutiny upon his hands. Superstition was rampant; they were an hundred, he was one. Only the
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