"Yes, sir, I'm glad I came!" said grandfather faintly and meanderingly. "I wasn't sure about Tom--all this new-fangled education and these uniforms without any color in 'em. But I saw him firing away steady as a rock; yes, sir! I was in it, too, under fire! It made my heart thump-thump like the old days. And we're going to hold 'em--we're going to teach the land-sharks--I'm very happy--made my heart thump so--kind of tired me--" The old man's voice died away into silence. His knees weakened their grip and his legs swung pendulum-like with Stransky's steps. "What about me for a sleeping-car!" thought Stransky. "But he's certainly harder to carry." Yet it pleased Stransky not to waken his passenger until they reached the station his ticket called for. Entering the cut, he was halted by the challenging cry of "Who goes there?" in his own tongue. "Stransky of the Reds!" he roared back. "Stransky, private of the 53d--Stransky and his bride and grandfather!" "All right, Bert!" was the answer. "Hurrah for you! I'd know your old bull voice out of a thousand." Even this did not arouse grandfather. Stransky trudged on past the sentry, across a road and up three series of steps of a garden terrace, through a breach in a breastwork of sand-bags, and was again at home--the only home he knew--among the comrades of his company. Most of them had fallen asleep on the ground after finishing their rations, logs of men in animal exhaustion. Some of those awake were too weary to give more than a nod and smile and an exclamation of delight. They had witnessed too much horror that day to be excited over a soldier with an old man on his back. A few of the others, including Tom Fragini, gathered around the pair. "We've arrived, grandfather!" said Stransky, squatting. There was no answer. "He certainly sleeps sound. I wonder if--." "Yes," said Dellarme, who with Tom eased the fall of the limp body. The thumping of an old man's heart with the youth of a Hussar had been too much for it. "He was game!" said Stransky. "There isn't much in this world except to be game, I've concluded; and you can't be so old or so poor or so big-nosed and wall-eyed that you can't be game." Marta, coming out on the veranda, had not heard his remark, but she had seen a leonine sort of private bearing an old man on his back and had guessed that he had remained behind to save a life when every man in uniform had been engaged in taking life. "You are tired! You are hungry!" she said with urgent gentleness. "Come in!"