or her. Six weeks ago trimming
rose-bushes and now--this is life! La, la, la! There's been romance and
destiny in the whole business for us both, Lanny. And you--you are
acting chief of staff! I forgot to congratulate you, Your Excellency.
Your Excellency! Think of that! But it's no surprise to me. Didn't we go
to school together? How could any one ever go to school with me and not
be a great man? And I'm wearing a flower in my buttonhole! La, la, la!"

All that night and day before the night set for the attack, while the
guns were being emplaced and the infantry formed in a gray carpet
behind the slopes, a chill, misty rain fell, which the devout of the
Grays might say proved that God was with them rather than with the
Browns; for it screened their movements from the Brown lookouts. The
judge's son and Peterkin and others of Fracasse's company had finished
their mine; the fuses were laid. There was no dry place for a seat in
their flooded redoubt and they had to stand, eating cold rations and
shivering in their filthy, wet clothes. The whole army was drenched; the
whole army shivered.

If only the air did not clear when darkness fell! The last thing the
staff of the Grays wanted was to see a star in the sky. Had they
believed in prayer they would have gone on their knees for a black fog,
unaware that all that they would hide had been made known to the Browns
through Marta almost from the hour that the preparations for the attack
were begun.

With darkness, the rain ceased; but the mist remained a thick mantle
over the landscape, impenetrable to the watchful search-lights of the
Browns, which never stopped playing from sunset to dawn. The gray carpet
of the reserves that were to form Westerling's ram moved over the
slopes, dipping and rising with the convolutions of the earth, with no
word spoken except the repeated whispered warnings of silence from the
officers. Sweeping on up toward the redoubts, it found that parallels
and trenches had been filled to give footing for the swifter impulse of
the tide, once it was started for the heights.

A flash from Fracasse's pocket lamp showed faces pasty white and eyes of
staring glassiness. Fracasse's face and the colonel's were also
white--white with the rigidity of carved marble, carved with a set frown
of determination. Fracasse was going in with his company and the colonel
with his regiment. It was their duty. Both realized the nature of the
risk; and, worse, each knew t