They're
going to put up a statue of Partow in the capital! It's to show him as
he died, dropped forward on the map, and in front of his desk a field of
bayonets. On one face of the base will be his name. Two of the other
faces will have 'God with us!' and 'Not for theirs, but for ours!' The
legend on the fourth face the war is to decide."

"Victory! Victory!" cried those who had listened to the announcement.

"My mother says just what yours says, Tom. I needn't come home unless we
win."

"The girl I'm going to marry said that, too!"

"If we go back with the Gray army at our heels we shall strike a worse
fire than if we stick!"

Stransky was thinking that they had to do more than hold the Grays.
Before he should see his girl they had to take back the lost territory.
He carried two pictures of Minna in his mind: one when she had struck
him in the face as he had tried to kiss her and the other as he said
good-by at the kitchen door. There was not much encouragement in either.

"But when she gets better acquainted with me there's no telling!" he
kept thinking. "I was fighting out of cussedness at first. Now I'm
fighting for her and to keep what is ours!"

XLII

THE RAM

"I've learned that the greatest, most desperate attack of all is
coming," Marta told Lanstron. "But I don't know at what point. I see
Westerling only when he comes into the garden, and he does not come so
frequently of late."

Very sweet and very harrowing to him was the intimacy of their
conspiracy over that underground wire. With the prolongation of the
strain, he feared for her. He understood how she suffered. Sometimes he
felt that the Marta of their holiday comradeship was dead and it was the
impersonal spirit of a great purpose that brought him information and
inspiration. Her voice was taut, without inflection, as if in pain,
occasionally breaking into a dry sob, only to become even more taut
after a silence.

"I don't--I can't urge you to any further sacrifice," Lanstron replied.
"You have endured enough."

"But it will help? It will be of vital service?"

"Yes, tremendously vital."

"I will try to learn more when I see him," she continued. "But it cannot
be done by questioning. A single question might be fatal. The thing must
come in a burst of confidence. That's the horrible part of it, the--"
There was a dry sob over the wire as the voice broke and then went on
steadily: "But I'm game! I'm game!"

In the closet off the