laying the enemy's advance. Directly to
the rear was the cut through which the company had come from the main
pass road, and beyond that the Galland house, which was to be the second
stand.

"Can you see them from up here?" chirped a voice in a jubilant, cackling
laugh that drew Dellarme's attention to his immediate surroundings, and
he saw Grandfather Fragini coming up to join him on the crest. He slid
back on his stomach below the sky-line and held up an arresting hand.

"Kept along after you," piped the old man; "and it's just as I
thought--the glummest lot of funeral faces I ever seen!"

"You must not remain! Follow that cut there and it will take you out to
the road!" Dellarme told grandfather sharply.

"Just got to stay. Too tired to take another step," and grandfather
dropped in utter exhaustion. "Have to carry me if you want me to go."

"That means two men out of the line," thought Dellarme.

"You're an archaic old fire-eater!" Stransky remarked in cynical
amusement to grandfather Fragini.

"And you're a traitor!" answered grandfather with all the energy he
could command.

Now Dellarme disposed his men in line back of the ridge of fresh earth
that they had dug in the night, ready to rush to their places when he
blew the whistle that hung from his neck, but he did not allow them a
glimpse over the crest.

"I know you are curious, but powerful glasses are watching for you to
show yourselves; and if a battery turned loose on us you'd understand,"
he explained.

The men wanted to talk but did not know what to talk about, so they
examined their rifles critically as if they were unfamiliar gifts which
they had found in their stockings on Christmas morning. Some began to
empty their magazines of cartridges for the pleasure or occupation of
refilling them; but one of the lieutenants stopped this. It might mean
delay when the whistle blew. Thus the hours wore on, and the church
clock struck nine and ten.

"Never a movement down there!" called the sergeant from the crest to
Dellarme. "Maybe this is just their final bluff before they come to
terms about Bodlapoo"--that stretch of African jungle that seemed very
far away to them all.

"Let us hope so!" said Dellarme seriously.

"Hope there won't be any war! Just listen to that from an army officer,
with the enemy right in front of him!" gasped grandfather.

XVII

A SUNDAY MORNING IN TOWN

"You ought not to leave the house--not this morning," pro