“Just what I feared!” exclaimed the medical man. “We’ll have to keep him under closer restraint.”
“Who is he, sir?” asked Jerry, saluting the surgeon, who bore the rank of major. “All we know is that we heard a commotion in the dark, and found my chum here, Bob Baker, struggling with this man.”
“Meldon is a private suffering from shell shock,” answered the doctor. “He has violent spells, and then gets up and imagines he’s attacking a German.”
The soldier in pajamas seemed to have become completely quiet now. He gently shook himself loose from those holding him, and, advancing to Bob, held out his hand.
“I’m all kinds of sorry, old man,” he said in a cultured voice. “These spells come on me before I know it, but they’re getting less frequent. All I know is that I went to sleep in my usual berth and woke up having a dickens of a fight. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. But it must have come on me in my sleep, and I thought I was back again fighting the Huns.”
“Well, as long as you did your share of that I’ll call it square,” said Bob, with a laugh. “At first I thought you were——”
He stopped, with a significant look at Ned and Jerry.
“Did you think I was a Boche, too?” asked the soldier who had caused the commotion.