The clerk was right in thinking Westerling preoccupied; but it was not with the international crisis. He had dismissed that for the present from his thoughts by sending the 128th Regiment to South La Tir. He might move some other regiments in the morning if advices from the premier warranted. At all events, the army was ready, always ready for any emergency. He was used to international crises. Probably a dozen had occurred in the ten years since he had spoken his adieu to a young girl at a garden-gate. Over his coffee the name of Miss Marta Galland, in a list of arrivals at a hotel, had caught his eye in the morning paper. A note to her had brought an answer, saying that her time was limited, but she would be glad to have him call at five that afternoon. Rather impatiently he watched the slow minute-hand on the clock. He had risen from his desk at four-thirty, when his personal aide, a handsome, boyish, rosy-cheeked young officer, who seemed to be moulded into his uniform, appeared. "Your car is waiting, sir," he said. His military correctness could not hide the admiration and devotion in his eyes. He thought himself the most fortunate lieutenant in the army. To him Westerling was, indeed, great. Westerling realized this. "This is a personal call," Westerling explained; "so you are at liberty to make one yourself, if you like," he added, with that magnetic smile of a genial power which he used to draw men to him and hold them. III OURS AND THEIRS On the second terrace, Feller, the Gallands' gardener, a patch of blue blouse and a patch of broad-brimmed straw hat over a fringe of white hair, was planting bulbs. Mrs. Galland came down the path from the veranda loiteringly, pausing to look at the flowers and again at the sweep of hills and plain. The air was singularly still, so still that she heard the cries of the children at play in the yards of the factory-workers' houses which had been steadily creeping up the hill from the town. She breathed in the peace and beauty of the surroundings with that deliberate appreciation of age which holds to the happiness in hand. To-morrow it might rain; to-day it is pleasant. She was getting old. Serenely she made the most of to-day. The gardener did not look up when she reached his side. She watched his fingers firmly pressing the moist earth around the bulbs that he had sunk in their new beds. There were only three more to set out, and her inclination, in keeping with her leisureliness, was to wait on the completion of his task before speaking. Again she let her glance wander away to the distances. It was arrested and held this time by two groups of far-away points in the sky along the frontier, in the same bright light of that other afternoon when Captain Arthur Lanstron had made his first night over the range. "Look!" she cried. "Look, look!" she repeated, a girlish excitement rippling her placidity.