rees that he was the one great soldier that
the Balkan wars produced. He won his battles against the Turks easily,
and without the loss of great numbers of men, and when the Bulgarians
attacked, we and the Greeks fought the campaign according to his
strategy. The German military attache said that General Pushkin was fit
to command the greatest army in the world. He said he was a military
genius of the first rank, and one of the greatest soldiers developed in
Europe since the time of von Moltke."

"Then he must be good, because the Germans know a good soldier when they
see him."

"He has done everything that has been required of him so far. This war
with Austria will be his great test--only he doesn't regard it as a
test, but as an opportunity. My father says that that is the true mark
of a man's character. He says the weak man, who hasn't got it in him to
succeed, thinks of a difficult thing he has to do, or to try to do, as a
trial, a test, and that the big man, who is sure to amount to something,
simply looks at it as a chance to show what he has in him."

"I know what you mean." Dick nodded. "My own father used to say that,
too. That was the trouble with Mike Hallo, I guess. If things looked
hard he was always complaining, and my father used to get pretty sore at
him sometimes. My father just gritted his teeth and went to work. I
remember hearing them talk about the panic a few years ago. An awful lot
of business houses were smashed then, but my father pulled through,
though Hallo wanted to quit. He said they would only be throwing good
money after bad if they kept on."

They had been walking briskly while they talked, and it was not long
before they came to the flat, marshy ground near the banks of the
Danube. Here it was a sluggish, thick, yellow stream, flowing along
impressively because of its bulk, but lacking every element of beauty
and romance.

"This doesn't look much like the beautiful blue Danube, does it, Steve?"
Dick suggested.

"No," said Steve, with a laugh. "It's not pretty--not here. There is
some fine scenery between here and the coast, though, where it marks the
boundary between Roumania and Bulgaria. And it's all historic. On the
Bulgarian side further down, the ground is high, with a sharp ascent
from the river. There was some fierce fighting in the Russo-Turkish
war--the war that freed Bulgaria, you know, and really helped a lot to
make Servia free, too. At one place the Russians crossed i