first terrace
wall, where he could see any one coming up the main flight of steps from
the road. When Marta walked she usually came from town by that way. At
length the sound of a slow step from another direction broke on his car.
Some one was approaching along the path that ran at his feet. Around the
corner of the wall, in his workman's Sunday clothes of black, but still
wearing his old straw hat, appeared Feller, the gardener. He paused to
examine a rose-bush and Lanstron regarded him thoughtfully and sadly:
his white hair, his stoop, his graceful hands, their narrow finger-tips
turning over the leaves.

As he turned away he looked up, and a glance of definite and unfaltering
recognition was exchanged between the two men. Feller's hat was promptly
lowered enough to form a barrier between their eyes. His face was
singularly expressionless. It seemed withered, clayish, like the walls
of a furnace in which the fire has died out. After a few steps he paused
before another rose-bush. Meanwhile, both had swept the surroundings in
a sharp, covert survey. They had the garden to themselves.

"Gustave!" Lanstron exclaimed under his breath.

"Lanny!" exclaimed the gardener, turning over a branch of the rose-bush.
He seemed unwilling to risk talking openly with Lanstron.

"You look the good workman in his Sunday best to a T!" said Lanstron.

"Being stone-deaf," returned Feller, with a trace of drollery in his
voice, "I hear very well--at times. Tell me"--his whisper was quivering
with eagerness--"shall we fight? Shall we fight?"

"We are nearer to it than we have ever been in our time," Lanstron
replied.

The hat still shaded Feller's face, his stoop was unchanged, but the
branch in his hand shook.

"Honest?" he exclaimed. "Oh, the chance of it! the chance of it!"

"Gustave!" Lanstron's voice, still low, came in a gust of sympathy, and
the pocket which concealed his hand gave a nervous twitch as if it held
something alive and distinct from his own being. "The trial wears on
you! You feel you must break out?"

"No, I'm game--game, I tell you!" Still Feller spoke to the branch,
which was steady now in a firm hand. "No, I don't grow weary of the
garden and the isolation as long as there is hope. But being deaf,
always deaf, and yet hearing everything! Always stooped, even when the
bugles are sounding to the artillery garrison--that is somewhat
tiresome!"

"The idea of being deaf was yours, you know, Gustave," said Lan