Of course, there are plenty still alive--tyrants of
every degree born to the business of tyranny and making a success at it."

He smoked tranquilly for a while, then:

"There are our tyrants of industry," he said; "tyrants of politics,
tyrants of religion--great and small we still harbor plenty of tyrants,
all scheming to keep their roots from shriveling under this fierce western
sun of ours----"

He laughed without mirth, turning his worn and saddened eyes on Gray:

"Tyranny is a business," he repeated; "also it is a state of mind--a
delusion, a ruling passion--strong even in death.... The odd part of it is
that a tyrant never knows he's one.... He invariably mistakes himself for
a local Moses. I can tell you a sort of story if you care to listen....
Or, we can go to some cheerful show or roof-garden----"

"Go on with your story," said Gray.

CHAPTER XII

FIFTY-FIFTY

Vail began:

Tyranny was purely a matter of business with this little moral shrimp
about whom I'm going to tell you. I was standing between a communication
trench and a crater left by a mine which was being "consolidated," as they
have it in these days.... All around me soldiers of the third line swarmed
and clambered over the debris, digging, hammering, shifting planks and
sandbags from south to north, lugging new timbers, reels of barbed wire,
ladders, cases of ammunition, machine guns, trench mortars.

The din of the guns was terrific; overhead our own shells passed with a
deafening, clattering roar; the Huns continued to shell the town in front
of us where our first and second lines were still fighting in the streets
and houses while the third line were reconstructing a few yards of
trenches and a few craters won.

Stretchers and bearers from my section had not yet returned from the
emergency dressing station; the crater was now cleared up except of enemy
dead, whose partly buried arms and legs still stuck out here and there. A
company of the Third Foreign Legion had just come into the crater and had
taken station at the loopholes under the parapet of sandbags.

As soon as the telephone wires were stretched as far as our crater a
message came for me to remain where I was until further orders. I had just
received this message and was walking along, slowly, behind the rank of
soldiers, who stood leaning against the parapet with their rifles thrust
through the loops, when somebody said in English--in East Side New York
English I m