ding as blows, looking down upon his sweating,
unremonstrant obedience as from a very mountain-top of superiority.
The clay was dry as flour, and puffed into dust under the spade;
the slanting sun had yet a vigor of heat; and Herr Haase, in his
tail-coat and his cloth boots, floundered among the little craters
and earth-heaps, and dug and perspired submissively.

As he completed each hole to Von Wetten's satisfaction, that demigod
dropped one or more of his small packages into it, and arranged them
snugly with the iron rod. While he did so, Herr Haase eased himself
upright, wiped the sweat from his brow, and gazed across at the other
two. He saw the young man dipping a brush in a bottle, which he had
taken from the black bag, and painting with it upon the metal plates,
intent and careful; while beside him the old baron, with his hands
clasped behind his back, watched him with just that air of blended
patronage and admiration with which a connoisseur, visiting a studio,
watches an artist at work.

Von Wetten spoke at his elbow. "Fill this in!" he said, in those
tones of his that would have roused rebellion in a beast of burden.
"And tread the earth down on it firmly!"

"Zu Befehl, Herr Hauptmann," answered Herr Haase hastily. But he was
slow enough in obeying to see the young man, his painting finished,
take the bottle in his hand, and toss it over the parapet into the
lake and turn, the great jagged scar suddenly red and vivid on the
pallor of his thin face, to challenge the Baron with his angry eyes.

The Baron met them with his small indomitable smile. "The machine is
ready now?" he inquired smoothly.

"Ready when you are," snapped the other.

Herr Haase had to return to his labors then and lose the rest of that
battle of purposes, of offence offered and refused, which went on
over the head of the waiting machine. Von Wetten left him for a while
and was busy throwing things that looked like glass jars into the
lake. When at last the fifth and final hole was filled and trodden
down under the sore heels in the cloth boots, the others were
standing around the apparatus. They looked up at him as he cast down
the spade and clapped a hand to the main stiffness in the small of
his back.

"All finished?" called the Baron. "Then come over here, my good
friend, or you will be blown up. Eh, Herr Bettermann?"

Herr Bettermann shrugged those sharp shoulders of his; he was
shifting the tripod legs of his machine. "Blow hi