ed, with a fleshless skull's face, had passed his arm under
that of the old woman and was supporting her. The lieutenant saw that
bony mask, too, break into a smile. He looked at the others, the
barefoot girls and the women; whatever the understanding was, they
shared it; each oval, sun-tinged face, under its crown of jet hair,
had the same faint light of laughter of tragic, inscrutable mirth, at
once contemptuous and pitiful. Along the street, folk had come forth
from their doors and stood watching in silence.

"That's right, Corporal; tie him up," came Captain Harm's thickish
voice, rich and fruity with the assurance of power. "He won't desert
again when I've done with him and he won't resist either."

It was not for him to see, in those smiles, that the helpless man,
bound for the flogging-posts of the "Dolina of Weeping," where so
many martyrs to that goddess which is Italy had expiated in torment
their crimes of loyalty and courage, had already found a refuge
beyond the reach of his spies and torturers that he opposed even now
to bonds and blows a resistance that no armed force could overcome.
If he saw the smiles at all, he took them for a tribute to his brisk,
decisive action with the cane.

"And now, take him along," he commanded, when the prisoner's wrists
were tied behind him to his satisfaction. "And stand no nonsense! If
he won't walk make him!"

The corporal saluted. "Zu Befehl, Herr Hauptmann," he deferred, and
the prisoner was thrust down the bank. The old mother, her head
averted, moaned softly. The old man, upholding her, smiled yet his
death's-head smile.

The tiger-yellow of the grass between the trees was paler, the black
was blacker, as the two officers returned across the fields; to the
hush of afternoon had succeeded the briskness of evening. Birds were
awake and a breeze rustled in the branches; and Captain Hahn was
strongly moved to speech.

"System," he said explosively. "All war all life comes down to
system. You get your civil labor by system; you keep it by system.
Now, that little arrest."

It was as maddening as the noise of a mouse in a wainscot. Jovannic
wanted not so much to think as to dwell in the presence of his
impressions. Those strange, quiet smiles!

"Did you see them laughing?" he interrupted. "Smiling, I should say.
After you had cut the fellow down they stopped crying out and they
smiled."

"Ha! Enough to make 'em," said Captain Hahn. "I laughed myself. All
that p