. Westerling will be convinced that repeated,
overwhelming attacks will gain our main line. Instead of using
engineering approaches, he will throw his battalions, masses upon
masses, against our works until his strength is spent. It would be
baiting the bull. A risk--a risk--but, my boy, I am going to--"

Partow's head, which was bent in thought, dropped with a jerk. A
convulsion shook him and he fell forward onto the map, his brave old
heart in its last flutter, and Lanstron was alone in the silent room
with the dead and his responsibility.

"The order that I knew he was about to speak, Marta, I gave for him,"
Lanstron concluded. "It seemed to me an inspiration--his last
inspiration--to make the counter-attack a feint."

"And you're acting chief of staff, Lanny? You against Westerling?"

"Yes."

XL

WITH FRACASSE'S MEN

We have heard nothing of Jacob Pilzer, the butcher's son, and Peterkin,
the valet's son, and others of Fracasse's company of the 128th of the
Grays since Hugo Mallin threw down his rifle when they were firing on
scattered Brown soldiers in retreat.

It was in one of the minor actions of the step-by-step advance after the
taking of the Galland house that the judge's son received official
notice of a holiday in the form of a nickel pellet from the Browns which
made a clean, straight hole the size of a lead pencil through his flesh
and then went singing on its way without deflection, as if it liked to
give respites from travail to tired soldiers.

"Grazed the ribs--no arteries!" remarked the examining surgeon. "You'll
be well in a month."

"We'll hold the war for you!" called the banker's son cheerily after the
still figure on the stretcher.

"And you'll get gruel and custards, maybe," said the barber's son. "I
like custards."

Once the judge's son had thought that nothing could be so grand as to be
wounded fighting for one's country. He had in mind then, as the object
of his boyish admiration, a young officer returned from a little
campaign against the blacks in Africa, when, the casualties being few
and the scene distant and picturesque, all heroes with scars had an
aspect of romantic exclusiveness. But there was no more distinction now
in being wounded than in catching cold. Truly, colonial wars were the
only satisfactory kind.

The judge's son found himself one of many men on cots in long rows in
the former barracks of the Browns near La Tir. Daily bulletins told the
patients