d hungry. She hurried in to Minna, and together they emptied the
larder of everything, even to the lumps of sugar, which were impartially
bestowed.

But Marta remained in the chair by the doorway of the tower, weak and
listless. She was weary of the sight of uniforms and bayonets. In the
dreary opaqueness of her mind flickered one tiny, bright light as
through a blanket; that she herself had been in danger. She had been
under fire. She had not merely sent men to death; she had been in
death's company.

Now her lashes were closed; again they opened slightly as her gaze roved
the semicircle of the horizon. A mounted officer and his orderly
galloping across the fields to the pass road caught her desultory
attention and held it, for they formed the most impetuous object on the
landscape. When the officer alighted at the foot of the garden and
tossed his reins to the orderly, she detected something familiar about
him. He leaped the garden wall at a bound and, half running, came toward
the tower. Not until he lifted his cap and waved it did she associate
this lithe, dapper artillerist with a stooped old gardener in blue
blouse and torn straw hat who had once shuffled among the flowers at her
service.

"Hello! Hello!" he shouted in clarion greeting at sight of her. "Hello,
my successor!"

Only in the whiteness of his hair was he like the old Feller. His tone,
the boyish sparkle of his black eyes, those full, expressive lips
playing over the brilliant teeth, his easy grace, his quick and telling
gestures--they were of the Feller of cadet days. Something in his look
as he stopped in front of her startled Marta. Suddenly he bent over and
drew down his face, with dropping underlip.

"I'm deaf--stone deaf, if you please!" he wheezed in senile fashion.

She had to laugh and he laughed, too, with the ringing tone of youth
that made him seem younger than his years.

"Not a gardener--a colonel of artillery, in the uniform, under the flag
again, thanks to you!" he cried. "An officer once more!"

"I'm glad!" she exclaimed. Here was one thing more to the credit of war.

"Thanks to you, instead of being shot as a spy--thanks to you!" More
than the emotion of the brimming gratitude of his heart shone through
his mobile features.

"It was your choice; you improved it. You fulfilled a faith that I had
in you," she said.

"Faith in me! That is the finest tribute of all--better than this,
better than this!" He touched the iron cro