rtow: a message for you and the nation!" he announced,
as he spread a few thin, typewritten pages out on the table. "I was
under promise never to reveal its contents unless our army drove the
Grays back across the frontier. The original is in the staff vaults. I
have carried this copy with me."

At the mention in an arresting tone of that name of the dead chief, to
which the day's events had given the prestige of one of the heroes of
old, there was grave attention.

"I think we have practically agreed that the two individuals who were
invaluable to our cause were Partow and Miss Galland," Lanstron remarked
tentatively. He waited for a reply. It was apparent that he was laying a
foundation before he went any further.

"Certainly!" said the vice-chief.

"And you!" put in another officer, which brought a chorus of assent.

"No, not I--only these two!" Lanstron replied. "Or, I, too, if you
prefer. It little matters. The thing is that I am under a promise to
both, which I shall respect. He organized and labored for the same
purpose that she played the spy. When we sent the troops forward in a
counter-attack and pursuit to clear our soil of the Grays; when I
stopped them at the frontier--both were according to Partow's plan. He
had a plan and a dream, this wonderful old man who made us all seem
primary pupils in the art of war."

Could this be that terrible Partow, a stroke of whose pencil had made
the Galland house an inferno? Marta wondered as Lanstron read his
message--the message out of the real heart of the man, throbbing with
the power of his great brain. His plan was to hold the Grays to
stalemate; to force them to desist after they had battered their
battalions to pieces against the Brown fortifications. His dream was the
thing that had happened--that an opportunity would come to pursue a
broken machine in a bold stroke of the offensive.

"I would want to be a hero of our people for only one aim, to be able to
stop our army at the frontier," he had written. "Then they might drive
me forth heaped with obloquy, if they chose. I should like to see the
Grays demoralized, beaten, ready to sue for peace, the better to prove
my point that we should ask only for what is ours and that our strength
was only for the purpose of holding what is ours. Then we should lay up
no legacy of revenge in their hearts. They could never have cause to
attack again. Civilization would have advanced another step."

Lanstron continued t