h with a flutter of pats from both hands.

XXVIII

AN APPEAL TO PARTOW

"You, Marta--you are still there!" Lanstron exclaimed in alarm when he
heard her voice over the tunnel telephone. "But safe!" he added in
relief. "Thank God for that! It's a mighty load off my mind. And your
mother?"

"Safe, too."

"And Minna and little Clarissa Eileen?"

"All safe."

"Well, you're through the worst of it. There won't be any more fighting
around the house, and certainly Westerling will be courteous. But where
is Gustave?"

"Gone!"

"Gone!" he repeated dismally.

In a flash he had guessed another tragedy for poor Gustave, who must
have once more failed to stick to his purpose, thus shattering the last
hope that the thousandth chance would ever come to anything.

"Wait until you hear how he went," Marta said. With all the vividness of
her impressions, a partisan for the moment of him and Dellarme, she
sketched Feller's part with the automatic.

As he listened, Lanstron's spirit was twenty again, with the fever that
Feller's "let's set things going!" could start rollicking in his veins.
What did the thousandth chance matter? Only a wool-gatherer would ever
have had any faith in it. Victory for Gustave! Victory for the friend in
whom he believed when others had disbelieved! Victory for those gifts
that had broken a career against army routine in peace, once they had
full play in war!

"I can see him," he said. "It was a full breath of fresh air to the
lungs of a suffocating man. I--"

Marta was off in interruption in the full tide of an appeal.

"You must--I promised--you must let him have the uniform again!" she
begged. "You must let him keep his automatic. To take it away would be
like separating mother and child; like separating Minna from Clarissa
Eileen."

"Better than an automatic--a battery of guns!" replied Lanstron. "This
is where I will use any influence I have with Partow for all it is
worth. Now, let the red-tapists dare to point to his past when I ask
anything for him and I'll overwhelm them with the living present! Yes,
and he shall have the iron cross. It is for such deeds as his that the
iron cross was meant."

"Thank you," she said. "It's worth something to make a man as happy as
you will make him. Yes, you are real flesh and blood to do this, Lanny."

Her point won with surprising ease, when she had feared that military
form and law could not be circumvented, she leaned against the wall