said, for fear of again seeing those stern, reproachful eyes. The guard
at the gate had received orders to admit no more of the rank and file,
even when they came as messengers; and so the child was safe, said
Margaret. As for herself, she _must_ drive, she _must_ see Will Gray.

But the instant she re-entered the house Mrs. Garrison knew that during
her brief absence some new trouble had come. Good heavens, could she
never leave Nita's side that harm did not befall her! At the head of the
broad flight of stairs stood her brother-in-law, a black frown on his
brow.

"Go in and do what you can for her," he briefly said. "I thought--she'd
be glad to know that--that--fellow would trouble her no more."

"That fellow?" she gasped. "You mean----"

"I mean--Yes--Latrobe--killed and buried a whole week ago."

"And you told _her_!" she cried, clinching her little hands in impotent
wrath. "You--brute!"

* * * * *

Another week rolled by. The tide of battle had swept inland and
northward; and all eyes were on the plucky advance of MacArthur's strong
division, while far out to the south and east the thinned and depleted
lines of Anderson held an insurgent force that forever menaced but dare
not attack. The Primeval Dudes, sorely missing their calmly energetic
colonel, had drifted into a war of words with their nearest neighbors on
the firing line, a far Western regiment gifted with great command of
language and small regard for style. The latter had crowed mightily over
their more rigorously disciplined comrades because of the compliments
bestowed on them in an official report, wherein the Dudes received only
honorable mention. It was Captain Stricker of the volunteers who had led
the dash on the rebel works across the Tripa to the left of Blockhouse
12. It was their Sergeant Finney who whacked a Filipino major with the
butt of his Springfield, and tumbled out of him the batch of reports and
records that gave the numbers and positions of every unit of Pilar's
division on the southward zone. It was their Corporal Norton who got the
Mauser through the shoulder just as, foremost in the rush, he bayoneted
the last Tagal at the Krupp guns in the river redoubt. It was his devoted
bunky, Private Latrobe, who volunteered to carry the division commander's
dispatch across the open rice field and the yawning ditches that
separated the staff from the rest of the charging --teenth, and who died