"No, sir; we would prefer to stay," Dellarme answered quietly.

"Good! Then you will take this battalion and I'll transfer Groller to
Alvery's Bad loss, Alvery--shrapnel. The artillery has been doing ugly
work, but that is all in favor of the defensive. If we can hold them on
this line till to-morrow noon, it's all we want for the present," he
concluded.

"We'll hold them! Don't worry!" put in Stransky.

If a private had spoken to a colonel in this fashion at drill, without
being spoken to, it would have been a glaring breach of military
etiquette. Now that they were at war it was different. Real comradeship
between officer and man begins with war.

"We shall, eh?" chuckled the colonel. "You look big enough to hold
anything, young man! Here! Isn't this the fellow that Lanstron got off?"

"Yes, sir," answered Dellarme.

"Well, was Lanstron right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Wonderful man, Lanstron!"

"He knows just' a little too much!" Stransky half growled.

XXIV

THE MAKING OF A HERO

A digression, this, about pale, little Peterkin, the valet's son, whom
we left nibbling a biscuit in perfect security after his leap in mortal
terror. When Fracasse's men rose from their trench for the final charge
and found that the enemy had gone, Peterkin, hearing their cheer and the
thunderous tread of their feet, dared to look above the edge of the
shell crater. Here was his company coming and he not in the ranks where
he belonged. Of course he ought to have gone back with them when they
went; whatever they did he ought to do. This was the only safe way for
one of his incurable stupidity, as the drill sergeant had told him
repeatedly.

He recognized the stocky butcher's son and other familiar figures among
his comrades. Their legs, unlike his, had not been paralyzed with
fright; they had been able to run. He was in an absolute minority of
one, which he knew, from the experience of his twenty years of life and
his inheritance as a valet's son, meant that he was utterly in the
wrong. In a minute they would be sweeping down on him. They would be
jeering him and calling him a rabbit or something worse for hiding in
the ground.

Fright prompted him to a fresh impulse. Picking up his rifle, which he
had not touched since his leap, he faced toward the now unoccupied crest
of the knoll and commenced firing. Meanwhile, Fracasse's men had reached
the point where their first charge had broken, marked by a line of
bodies, inclu