ming."

A crowd of soldiers was now pressing around Stransky, and in the front
rank was Grandfather Fragini.

"Said our flag was no better'n any other flag, did he?" piped the old
man. "Beat him to a pulp! That's what the Hussars would have done."

"If you don't mind telling it in public, Stransky, I should like to know
your origin," said Lanstron, prepared to be as considerate of an
anarchist's private feelings as of anybody's.

Stransky squinted his eyes down the bony bridge of his nose and grinned
sardonically.

"That won't take long," he answered. "My father, so far as I could
identify him, died in jail and my mother of drink."

"That was hardly to the purple!" observed Lanstron thoughtfully.

"No, to the red!" answered Stransky savagely.

"I mean that it was hardly inclined to make you take ft roseate view of
life as a beautiful thing in a well-ordered world where favors of
fortune are evenly distributed," continued Lanstron.

"Rather to make me rejoice in the hope of a new order of things--the
re-creation of society!" Stransky uttered the sentiment with the
triumphant pride of a pupil who knows his text-book thoroughly.

By this time the colonel commanding the regiment, who had noticed the
excitement from a distance, appeared, forcing a gap for his passage
through the crowd with sharp words. He, too, recognized Lanstron. After
they had shaken hands, the colonel scowled as he heard the situation
explained, with the old sergeant, still holding fast to Stransky's
collar, a capable and insistent witness for the prosecution; while
Stransky, the fire in his eyes dying to coals, stared straight ahead.

"It is only a suggestion, of course," said Lanstron, speaking quite as a
spectator to avoid the least indication of interference with the
colonel's authority, "but it seems possible that Stransky has clothed
his wrongs in a garb that could never set well on his nature if he tried
to wear it in practice. He is really an individualist. Enraged, he would
fight well. I should like nothing better than a force of Stranskys if I
had to defend a redoubt in a last stand."

"Yes, he might fight." The colonel looked hard at Stransky's rigid
profile, with its tight lips and chin as firm as if cut out of stone.
"You never know who will fight in the pinch, they say. But that's
speculation. It's the example that I have to deal with."

"He is not of the insidious, plotting type. He spoke his mind openly,"
suggested Lanstron