ot deep," he added.

"Do I get an iron cross?" she asked, smiling faintly. It was rather
pleasant to be alive.

"All the crosses--iron and bronze and silver and gold!" he replied.

"You forgot platinum," she said almost playfully, as she found nerves,
muscles, and bones intact after that drop over a precipice into a black
chasm. It was like the Marta of the days before she had undertaken to
reform all creation, her mother was thinking. "Did I help any?" she
asked seriously.

"Well, I should say so!" declared the doctor. "I should say so!" he
repeated. "You did the whole business down there by the gate."

"Yes, the whole business! I brought it all on--all! I--" She flung a
wild gesture at the landscape and then buried her face in her hands.
"Yes, I did the whole business I--I played, smiled, lied! That awful
sight--and he might not have been writing 'kill me' if I--"

The doctor grasped her shoulders to keep her from rising. He spoke the
first soothing words that came to mind. There was another shudder, an
effort at control, and her hands dropped and she was looking up with a
dull steadiness.

"I'm not going mad!" she exclaimed. "What happened to--to that man who
was pleading for death? Did any one who had been engaged in killing men
who wanted to live kill the one who wanted to die?"

"The shell burst that wounded you finished him," said the doctor.

"Which, of course, was quite according to the tenets of civilization,
which wouldn't have allowed it to be done as an open act of mercy!" said
Marta. "But that is only satire. It is of no service," she added, rising
to a sitting posture to look around.

The struggle by the gate was over. All the uninjured had made good their
escape. A Red Cross flag floated above the wounded and the debris of
overturned wagons. Brown skirmishers were descending the near-by slopes
and crossing the path of the cavalry charge. Signal-corps men were
spinning out their wires. A regiment of guns were being emplaced behind
a foot-hill. A returning Brown dirigible swept over the town. All
firing except occasional scattered shots had ceased in the immediate
vicinity, though in the distance could be heard the snarl of the firmer
resistance that the Grays were making at some other point. The Galland
house, for the time being, was isolated--in possession of neither side.

"Isn't there something else I can do to help with the wounded?" Marta
asked. She longed for action in order to escape he