tling softly. His huge
figure looked yet more huge outlined against the flames. He heard the
tread of the two young men and looking up recognized John instantly.

"Risen from the dead!" he exclaimed with warmth, clasping the young
man's hand in his own gigantic palm. "I had despaired of ever seeing you
again! There are so many more gallant lads whom I will certainly never
see! Ah, well, such is life! The roll of our brave young dead is long,
very long!"

He reclasped his hands behind his back and walking up and down began to
whistle again softly. His emotion over the holocaust had passed, and
once more he was the general planning for victory. But he stopped
presently and said to John:

"The Strangers, to whom you belong, have come under my command. You are
one of my children now. I have my eye on all of you. You are brave lads.
Go and seek rest with them while you can. You may not have another
chance in a month. We have driven the German, but he will turn, and then
we may fight weeks, months, no one knows how long. Ah, well, such is
life!"

John saluted respectfully, and withdrew to the little open glade in
which the Strangers were lying, sleeping a great sleep. Captain Colton
himself, wrapped in a blanket, was now a-slumber under a tree, and
Wharton and Carstairs near by, stretched on their sides, were deep in
slumber too. Fires were burning on the long line, but they were not
numerous, and in the distance they seemed mere pin points. At times bars
of intense white light, like flashes of lightning, would sweep along the
front, showing that the searchlights of either army still provided
illumination for the fighting. The note of the artillery came like a
distant and smothered groan, but it did not cease, and it would not
cease, since the searchlights would show it a way all through the night.

John sat down, looked at the faint flashes on the far horizon and
listened to that moaning which grew in volume as one paid close
attention to it. Europe or a great part of it had gone mad. He was
filled once more with wrath against kings and all their doings as he
looked upon the murderous aftermath of feudalism, the most gigantic of
all wars, made in a few hours by a few men sitting around a table. Then
he laughed at himself. What was he! A mere feather in a cyclone!
Certainly he had been blown about like one!

His nervous imagination now passed quickly and throwing himself upon the
ground he slept like those around him.