an wormed himself backward on his stomach until he was
below the sky-line, when his stiffened limbs brought him to his feet and
he started on a dead run down into the valley and toward a cut behind
another knoll across the road from the Galland house.

"Tom Fragini, with your corporal dead I put you in charge of the first
section! What are you waiting for, Corporal Fragini?"

Tom was bending over Grandfather Fragini, who had been forgotten by
everybody in the ordeal. The old man was lying where he had fallen after
the first burst of shrapnel.

"Can't go! Got a game leg!" said grandfather, pointing to a swollen
ankle that had been bruised by a piece of shrapnel jacket that had lost
most of its velocity before striking him. "You do your duty and leave me
alone. I ain't a fighting man any more. I done my work when I steadied
you young fellows."

"Yes, go on, Fragini," said Dellarme. "Attend to your men. Everybody in
his place. We'll get the old man away on a litter."

"Yes, you go or you ain't any grandson of mine!" shouted the old man in
a high-pitched voice. "Just been promoted, too! You'll be up for
insubordination in a minute, you young whelp!"

Dellarme meant to look after grandfather, but his attention was
engrossed in seeing that his men withdrew cautiously, for every minute
that he was able to delay the enemy's charge was vital. He himself
picked up a rifle in order to increase the volume of fire when the third
section was starting. As the fourth and last section drew off he uttered
his first cry of triumph of the day as his final look revealed the Grays
still in place. But they would not wait long once all fire from the
knoll had ceased. Stransky, who was in the fourth section, remained to
give a parting shot.

"Good-by, d---- you!" he called to the Grays. "You'll hear more from me
later!"

Then Dellarme saw that grandfather had not yet been carried away and no
litters remained. What was to be done? Grandfather was prompt with his
own view.

"Just leave me behind. I've done my work, I tell you!" he declared.

"Can't lose you, grandpop!" said Stransky.

Quickly shifting his pack to the ground, he squatted with his back to
the old man.

"I ain't going to--and you're a traitor, anyway; that's what you are!"

"No back talk! No politics in this!" Stransky replied. "Get up! You
carry your skin and I'll carry your bones. Get up quick!"

With Dellarme's authoritative assistance grandfather mounted. Then