rta had heard before. It had the high notes of men who were
weary, of a terrible exultation, of spirit stronger than tired legs and
as yet unsatisfied. Other exclamations from both officers and men
expressed a hunger whetted by the taste of one day's victory.

"We'll go on!"

"We'll make peace in their capital!"

"And with an indemnity that will stagger the world!"

"Nothing is impossible with Lanstron. How he has worked it out--baited
them to their own destruction!"

"A frontier of our own choosing!"

"On the next range. We will keep all that stretch of plain there!"

"And the river, too!"

"They shall pay--pay for attacking us!"

Pay, pay for the drudgery, the sleepless nights, the dead and the
wounded--for our dead and wounded! No matter about theirs! The officers
were too intent in their elation to observe a young woman, standing
quite still, her lips a thin line and a deep blaze in her eyes as she
looked this way and that at the field of faces, seeking some
dissentient, some partisan of the right. She was seeing the truth now;
the cold truth, the old truth to which she had been untrue when she took
Feller's place. There could be no choice of sides in war unless you
believed in war. One who fought for peace must take up arms against all
armies. Her part as a spy appeared to her clad in a new kind of shame:
the desertion of her principles.

Nor did the officers observe a man of thirty-five, wearing the cords of
the staff and a general's stars, coming around the corner of the house.
Marta's feverish, roving glance had noted him directly he was in sight.
His face seemed to be in keeping with the other faces, in the ardor of a
hunt unfinished; hand in blouse pocket, his bearing a little too easy to
be conventionally military--the same Lanny.

She was dimly conscious of surprise not to find him changed, perhaps
because he was unaccompanied by a retinue or any other symbol of his
power. He might have been coming to call on a Sunday afternoon. In that
first glimpse it was difficult to think of him as the commander of an
army. But that he was, she must not forget. She was shaken and
trembling; and a mist rose before her, so that she did not see him
clearly when, with a gesture of relief, he saw her.

"Lanstron!" exclaimed an officer in the first explosive breath of
amazement on recognizing him; then added: "His Excellency, the chief of
staff!"

But the one word, Lanstron, had been enough to thrill all the of