thing was that Peterkin looked
the most cheerful and well-kept of the four. As the proud possessor of a
pair of scissors, he had trimmed a surprisingly heavy beard Van Dyck
fashion, which emphasized his peaked features and a certain
consciousness of superiority; while the barber's son sported only a few
scraggly hairs. The scant, reddish product of Pilzer's cheeks, leaving
bare the liver patch, only accentuated its repulsiveness and a savagery
in his voice and look which was no longer latent under the conventional
discipline of every-day existence. The company had not been in the first
Engadir assault, but, being near the Engadir position, had suffered
heavily in support.

"You were in the big attack night before last?" asked the judge's son.

"We started in," said Peterkin, "but Captain Fracasse brought us back,"
he added in a way that implied that only orders had kept him from going
on.

Peterkin, the trembling little Peterkin of the baptismal charge across
the line of white posts, had been the first out of the redoubt on to the
glacis in that abortive effort, living up to the bronze cross on his
breast. He was one of the half dozen out of the score that had started
to return alive. The psychology of war had transformed his gallantry; it
had passed from simulation to reality, thanks to his established
conviction that he led a charmed life. Little Peterkin, always pale but
never getting paler, was ready to lead any forlorn hope. A superstitious
nature, which, at the outset of the war, had convinced him that he must
be killed in the first charge, now, as the result of his survival, gave
him all the faith of Eugene Aronson that the bullet would never be made
that could kill him.

"Was the attack general all along the front?" some one asked. "We
couldn't tell. All we knew was the hell around us."

"Yes," answered the judge's son.

"Did we accomplish anything?"

"A few minor positions, I believe."

"But we will win!" said Peterkin. "The colonel said so."

"And the news--what is the news?" demanded the barber's son. "You
needn't be afraid," he added. "The officers are on the other side of the
redoubt. They get sick of the sight of us and we of them and this is
their recess and ours from the eternal digging."

"Yes, the news from home!"

"Yes, from home! We don't even get letters any more. They've shut off
all the mails."

"I met a man from our town," said the judge's son. "He said that after
that story was