.

"I was thinking how men work their courage up, as if patriotism were a
Moloch of which they were afraid," he said. "How in order to get killed
we go out to kill others, when right is on their side! How you, Armand,
or you, Eugene, might be dead before to-morrow! How--."

"The bullet is not made that will get me!" exclaimed Eugene, with a
swelling breath from his bellows-like lungs.

"Take him home to mother!" groaned Pilzer.

"That will do for you, Hugo Mallin!" came another interruption, a sharp
one from Captain Fracasse, who had returned unobserved from the rear in
time to overhear Hugo's remarks. "And that's the way to talk, Aronson
and Pilzer. As for you, Mallin, I've a mind to put you under arrest and
send you back for a coward! A coward--do you hear?"

"Ah-h!" breathed Pilzer in a guttural of satisfaction.

Hugo crimsoned at first in confusion, then he looked frankly and
unflinchingly at the captain.

"Very well, sir!" he said with a certain dignity which Fracasse, who
was a good deal of a martinet, found very irritating.

"No, that would suit you too well!" Fracasse declared. "You shall stay!
You shall do the duty for which your country trained you and take your
share of the chances."

"Yes, sir!" answered Hugo. "But won't you," he asked persuasively and
with the wondering inquiry of the suggestion that had sprung into his
heretic brain, "won't you ask the men if there are not some here who
really, in their hearts, the logic of their hearts--which is often
better than brain logic--do not believe just as I do?"

"Have you gone insane? There are none!" In the impulse of anger that
swept his cheeks with a red wave Fracasse half drew his sword as if he
would strike Hugo. "And, Mallin, you are a marked man. I shall watch
you! I'll have the lieutenants and sergeants watch you. At the first
sign of flunking I'll make an example of you!"

"Yes, sir," answered Hugo, with the automatic deference of private to
officer but with a reserved and studious inquiry that made the captain
bite his lip.

"I'll have Aronson and Pilzer watch you, too!" Fracasse added.

"Yes, sir!" said Pilzer promptly.

Then, under the restraint of the captain's presence, there was a silence
that endured. The men were left to the sole resource of their thoughts
and observation of their surroundings. They were lying in a pasture
facing the line of white posts whose tops ran in an even row over level
ground. On the other side of the b