almost as grave and preoccupied as his
father--copied with his tiny gardening tools everything he saw his
father do. In course of time the child became a more and more useful
helper, till at last the two in equal comradeship spent their entire
energies on the land, by whose produce they were almost exclusively
nourished, with the addition of the milk from their own cow.

In the evening they sat opposite to each other, resting after their
toil. Occasionally, with a youth's eagerness for adventure, the younger
man would ask the elder to recount those military experiences to which
the decorations in the cash-box bore testimony; but the father gave
only scanty and unwilling replies. He bethought himself how in those
days of St. Privat they had stormed a burning village, rushing through
a fine field of ripe oats, and how a man had fallen next to him--a
boyish drummer--with a bullet in his throat. In dying he had grasped
and torn up the golden ears; and he held a bunch of them in his dead
hand, all dyed in his blood like some red flag.

Oh yes, he was proud of his medal and his cross, notwithstanding a
sort of doubt that he could not suppress. An ever-widening gulf now
separated him from that famous past; and it gave him a certain sense of
discomfort, in the midst of this life of creative labour, to think of a
time devoted chiefly, after all, to death and destruction.

It was from this feeling that he had abandoned his first intention
of making his son follow his own old profession. There was no hurry.
When the youngster was serving his time, he could decide to join on if
he liked.

And now one thing was certain: it was very tiresome that his son
should be called up just at this moment. Of course he mustn't let the
boy see it; but he felt it hard, all the same. The recruiting-sergeant
had pointed out to him that he could claim his son if he could show
that the lad was indispensable to his work. But August Vogt was too
honourable for that. Certainly he was sixty years of age; but even had
he been ninety he would have managed to keep things going. Still, it
was hard.

The father was probably heavier of heart than the son, as they paced
through the night together; but when they stood once more before their
door, after making a somewhat lengthy round, he only said: "Well, well,
young 'un; you'll often think of this. Now sleep well, your last night
at home." And as his son went off upstairs he added softly to himself,
"My de