recommend you for the bronze cross."

The bronze cross--desired of generals and privates--for Peterkin, when
Pilzer had been so confident that he should win the first that came to
the 128th now that Eugene Aronson was dead!

"I--I--" stammered Peterkin.

"And so modest about it!" added the colonel. "Remembered the lectures to
recruits and acted on them faithfully!"

The old spirit of the nation was not dead. Here it was reappearing in a
valet's son, as it was bound to reappear in all classes! Yes, Peterkin
had supplied the one shining incident of the costly day to the colonel,
who found himself without his headquarters for the night at the Galland
house as planned, waiting for orders on this confounded little knoll. He
was wondering if his regiment would be out in reserve and given a rest
on the morrow, when an officer of the brigade staff brought
instructions:

"The batteries are going to emplace here for your support in the
morning. You will move as soon as your men have eaten and occupy
positions B-31 to B-35. That gives you a narrow front for one battalion,
with two battalions in reserve to drive home your attack. The chief of
staff himself desires that we take the Galland house before noon. The
enemy must not have the encouragement of any successes."

"So easy for Westerling to say," thought the colonel; while aloud he
acknowledged the message with proper spirit.

Before the order to move was given the news of it passed from lip to lip
among the men in tired whispers. Since dawn they had lived through the
impressions of a whole war, and they had won. With victory they had not
thought of the future, only of their hunger. After the nightmare of the
charge, after hearing death whispering for hours intimately in their
ears, they were too weary and too far thrown out of the adjustments of
any natural habits of thought and feeling to realize the horror of
eating their dinners in the company of the dead. Now they were to go
through another hell, but many of them in their exhaustion were chiefly
concerned as to whether or not they should get any sleep that night.

Peterkin could hear his heart thumping and feel chills running down his
spine. How should he ever live up to a bronze cross--the precious cross
given for valor alone, which marked him as heroic for life--when all he
wanted to do was to crawl away to some quiet, safe place and munch more
biscuits? He had once been a buttons who looked down on scullery boys