around the table.

"I still rely on you to help me, Marta!" he whispered as he stood to one
side for her to enter.

XLVI

THE LAST SHOT

"Miss Galland!"

Blinking as she came out of the darkness into the bright light, with a
lock of her dew-sprinkled dark hair free and brushing her flushed cheek,
Marta saw the division chiefs of the Browns, after their start when
Lanstron spoke her name, all stand at the salute, looking at her rather
than at him. The reality in the flesh of the woman who had been a
comrade in service, sacrificing her sensibilities for their cause,
appealed to them as a true likeness of their conceptions of her. In
their eyes she might read the finest thing that can pass from man's to
woman's or from man's to man's. These were the strong men of her people
who had driven the burglar from her house with the sword of justice.
Their tribute had the steadfast loyalty of soldiers who were craving to
do anything in the world that she might ask, whether to go on their
knees to her or to kill dragons for her.

"I may come in?" she asked.

"Who if not you is entitled to the privilege of the staff council?"
exclaimed the vice-chief.

The others did not propose to let him do all the honors. Each murmured
words of welcome on his own account.

"We are here, thanks to you!"

"And, thanks to you, our flag will float over the Gray range!"

She must be tired, was their next thought. Four or five of them hurried
to place a chair for her, the vice-chief winning over his rivals, more
through the exercise of the rights of rank than by any superior
alacrity.

"You are appointed actual chief of staff and a field-marshal!" said the
vice-chief to Lanstron. "The premier says that every honor the nation
can bestow is yours. The capital is mad. The crowds are crying: 'On to
the Gray capital!' To-morrow is to be a public holiday and they are
calling it Lanstron Day. The thing was so sudden that the speculators
who depressed our securities in the world's markets have got their
due--ruin! And we ought to get an indemnity that will pay the cost of
the war."

Seated at one side, Marta could watch all that passed, herself
unobserved. She noted a touch of color come to Lanstron's cheeks as he
made a little shrug of protest.

"It never rains but it pours!" he said. "We were all just as able and
loyal yesterday as to-day when we find ourselves heroic. We owe our
victory to Partow's plans, to the staff's industry,