fortified camps. This had been too much for his
easily-inflamed imagination. He photographed and measured and
brooded upon these ancient remains. He was an engineer by day and
an archaeologist by night. He had crates of books sent down from
Paris,--everything that had been written on Caesar, in French and
German; he engaged a young priest to translate them aloud to him
in the evening. The priest believed the American was mad.

When Owens was in college he had never shown the least interest
in classical studies, but now it was as if he were giving birth
to Caesar. The war came along, and stopped the work on his dam.
It also drove other ideas into his exclusively engineering
brains. He rushed home to Kansas to explain the war to his
countrymen.. He travelled about the West, demonstrating exactly
what had happened at the first battle of the Marne, until he had
a chance to enlist.

In the Battalion, Owens was called "Julius Caesar," and the men
never knew whether he was explaining the Roman general's
operations in Spain, or Joffre's at the Marne, he jumped so from
one to the other. Everything was in the foreground with him;
centuries made no difference. Nothing existed until Barclay Owens
found out about it. The men liked to hear him talk. Tonight he
was walking up and down, his yellow eyes rolling, a big black
cigar in his hand, lecturing the young officers upon French
characteristics, coaching and preparing them. It was his legs
that made him so funny; his trunk was that of a big man, set on
two short stumps.

"Now you fellows don't want to forget that the night-life of
Paris is not a typical thing at all; that's a show got up for
foreigners.... The French peasant, he's a thrifty fellow....
This red wine's all right if you don't abuse it; take it
two-thirds water and it keeps off dysentery.... You don't
have to be rough with them, simply firm. Whenever one of them
accosts me, I follow a regular plan; first, I give her
twenty-five francs; then I look her in the eye and say, 'My girl,
I've got three children, three boys.' She gets the point at once;
never fails. She goes away ashamed of herself."

"But that's so expensive! It must keep you poor, Captain Owens,"
said young Lieutenant Hammond innocently. The others roared.

Claude knew that David particularly detested Captain Owens of the
Engineers, and wondered that he could go on working with such
concentration, when snatches of the Captain's lecture kept
breaking