Joseph Euge said as much to the pale, underfed-looking young man who crouched beside him in the bed of the truck. "The gasproof clothing," he added, "protects nothing but morale, and these men's morale needs to last only until--their job is done." The young man looked at him fixedly, seeing gray hair, a firm-lined face, and a suit that had been expensively respectable. They did not know each other's names. All the trials had been separate; each prisoner had been told that the others--whom, for the most part, he had never heard of--had confessed the whole plot. "What makes you think so?" "I know a good deal of the Dictator's ways," said Euge quietly; "I used to be well acquainted with him." "You were close to him--who are you?" "My name is Joseph Euge." "_Doctor_ Euge." The pale young man's eyes widened as he repeated the name the way the newspapers had printed it so often; he edged a little away from the other, jostling the woman beside him. She, too, stared with haunted eyes, and her lips framed the name in a whisper; the rest of the condemned--a large rough man in a workman's faded blue, a little Jew with twitching hands, and another youth who, like Euge's neighbor, had evidently been a student--looked at him also, with an expression compounded of wonder, fear, and hate. * * * * * Behind their masks, fixed eyes and bayonets gleaming, the guards sat stony-faced. They were trained to be blind, deaf, and dumb--and on occasion oblivious of smells--in the stern fulfillment of duty. "You are _the_ Dr. Euge?" whispered the woman with a flicker of interest. "The man who loosed the plague on the world?" He nodded and stared at his knees. "It is true," he said slowly, "that I was a military bacteriologist--one of the best; it is only an accident that I was anything more. I have made my share of mistakes. Most of us have been patriots at one time or another, else there could have been no Victory." Euge noted wryly how strong the indoctrination of his mind was, relegating the word 'war' to the realm of obscene taboos, and leaving only 'victory' permissible. "But--" he lifted his gray head and looked candidly into their faces, "when I 'loosed the plague', as you put it, I was not being a patriot and I do not think I was making a mistake." They stared at him with bleak eyes. Euge said almost pleadingly, "I believe you are all members of the Witnesses of the Lord, who are proscribed for maintaining that the plague is a punishment decreed against a sinful world. From that standpoint, surely I am not to blame for having acted as an instrument of divine justice." It was as if he appealed for judgment to these strangers, to whom he was united in the intimate community of a grave that must be shared. "He's right," said the Jew, and smiled a little, even then, with pleasure at a point well made. "We're inconsistent if we blame him."