Shortly after this Vogt inherited a small property from his wife's father, and the toll on the highway being at the same time abolished, he bought the now superfluous house cheap from the State, and set up as a peasant proprietor. He had now a new source of pride: that this land, which he watered with his sweat, should bring forth abundantly; that his cattle, whom no strange hand might touch, should be the sleekest and fattest of all. Solitary and unaided he laboured in house and field, as if wishing to defy that fate which had torn from him the only two people he had loved. As he could love them no longer he had rather be quite alone, save for the little chap who trotted after him everywhere, and--looking 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.