"I"--he looked around at the automatic ravenously and fearsomely--"I--" "It is all simply arranged. There is time for me to use the telephone before the Grays arrive. I shall tell Lanny why you took charge of the gun and how you handled it, and I know he will want you to keep it." "And the uniform--the uniform again! Yes, the uniform--if only a gunner private's uniform!" he exclaimed in short, pulsating breaths of ecstasy. "Yes, count on that, too! And good-by!" "Good-by! I--" But she had already turned away. "I've changed my mind! Exit gardener! Enter gunner! I'm going with you! I'm going with you!" he cried in a jubilant voice that arrested the attention of every one on the grounds. They saw him throw his arms around Stransky and then rush to the automatic. "One thought! One duty! Oh, that is easy now!" he breathed, caressing the breech with a flutter of pats from both hands. XXVIII AN APPEAL TO PARTOW "You, Marta--you are still there!" Lanstron exclaimed in alarm when he heard her voice over the tunnel telephone. "But safe!" he added in relief. "Thank God for that! It's a mighty load off my mind. And your mother?" "Safe, too." "And Minna and little Clarissa Eileen?" "All safe." "Well, you're through the worst of it. There won't be any more fighting around the house, and certainly Westerling will be courteous. But where is Gustave?" "Gone!" "Gone!" he repeated dismally. In a flash he had guessed another tragedy for poor Gustave, who must have once more failed to stick to his purpose, thus shattering the last hope that the thousandth chance would ever come to anything. "Wait until you hear how he went," Marta said. With all the vividness of her impressions, a partisan for the moment of him and Dellarme, she sketched Feller's part with the automatic. As he listened, Lanstron's spirit was twenty again, with the fever that Feller's "let's set things going!" could start rollicking in his veins. What did the thousandth chance matter? Only a wool-gatherer would ever have had any faith in it. Victory for Gustave! Victory for the friend in whom he believed when others had disbelieved! Victory for those gifts that had broken a career against army routine in peace, once they had full play in war! "I can see him," he said. "It was a full breath of fresh air to the lungs of a suffocating man. I--" Marta was off in interruption in the full tide of an appeal. "You must--I promised--you must let him have the uniform again!" she begged. "You must let him keep his automatic. To take it away would be like separating mother and child; like separating Minna from Clarissa Eileen."