“It must have been either A---- or B----,” he said musingly, turning again to the big slice of caramel cake he had just cut for himself when the interruption occurred. “Oh I beg pardon; but I’ve just had word that the middle _teleferica_ serving the Marmolada has been carried away by an avalanche, and that one of the engineers is killed. I was just speculating as to which one it was. They were both good men--men I can ill afford to lose. This puts an end, by the way, to the trip we had planned for you for to-morrow. You will have to go to the position at the---- instead; providing, of course, _that teleferica_ doesn’t meet a like fate.” South American revolution (in vivid reminiscence) had raised its hydra-head many times before I saw my way clear to turn the conversation into the channel where I was so interested to direct its flow. “Won’t you tell me, Colonel,” I said finally, “something of how the young Garibaldi have carried on the tradition of the old Garibaldi in this war? Tell me how it came about that you all foregathered in France in the early months of the war, what you did there, and what you have done since; and, especially, tell me how you took the Col di Lana.” “That’s (as you Americans say) rather a tall order,” was the laughing reply; “but I’ll gladly do what I can to fill it.” He drained his glass of cognac, waited till the occult rite of lighting his “Virginia” over its little spirit-lamp was complete, and then began his story (as I had hoped he would) at the beginning. The narration which follows was punctuated by the steady drip of the eaves and the not infrequent rumble of a distant avalanche as the hot south wind called _fun_ breathed its relaxing breath on a half winter’s accumulation of hanging snow. * * * * * “My father--and even my grandfather--had foreseen that Europe must ultimately fight its way to freedom through a great war; that the two irreconcilable forces (fairly represented by what France, England, Italy, and the United States stood for, on the one hand, and what Prussia and its satellites stood for on the other) made no other alternative possible. The same feelings which led my father and grandfather to fight for France in 1870 led me and my brothers to offer ourselves to fight for France and her Allies in 1914.