"Pardon me, madam, but Miss Galland"--he paused, dwelling with a slight inflection on his mention of the daughter as the talisman that warranted his presuming to disagree with the mother--"Miss Galland, when she took her last look around before going, said: 'Please don't cut any yet. I want to see them all abloom in their beds first.'" "She has taken such an interest in them, and my idea was to please her. Of course, leave them," said Mrs. Galland. She made repeated vigorous nods of assent to save herself the trouble of writing. Starting back up the steps, she murmured: "I suppose cut flowers are out of fashion--I know I am--and deaf gardeners are in." She sighed. "And you are twenty-seven, Marta, twenty-seven!" She drew another, a very long sigh, and then her serenity returned. "Ours did not pass theirs," observed the gardener, with a musing smile when he was alone; "but theirs nearly had a jolly spill there at the turn!" As he bent once more to his work a bumblebee approached on its glad, piratical errand from flower to flower in the rapt stillness, and Feller looked around with a slight courtesy of his hat brim. "You and your fussily thunderous wings!" he said, half aloud. "I wonder if you think you're an aeroplane. Surely, they'd never train you to evolute in squadrons. You are an anarchist, you are, and an epicurean into the bargain!" He went with his barrow for more bulbs. Meanwhile, the sun sank behind the range. The plain lay bathed in soft, golden light; the ravines were tongues of black shadow. As the evening gun boomed out from a fortress on the Brown side of the frontier, Feller glanced around to see if any one were watching. Assured that he was alone, he removed his hat, and, though he wiped the brim and wiped his brow, in his attitude was the suggestion of the military stance of attention at colors. A minute later, when the evening gun of the Grays across the white posts reverberated over the plain, he jammed his hat back on his head rather abruptly and started to the tool house with his barrow. "War! war!" he repeated softly. "Yes, war!" he added in eager desire. IV THE DIVIDENDS OF POWER