The vice-chief started as if he had received a sharp pin-prick. His shoulders unconsciously relaxed. He began a fresh study of a certain point on the table top. Lanstron, looking first at one and then at another, spoke again, his words as measured as they ever had been in military discussion and eloquent. He began outlining his own message which would go with Partow's to the premier, to the nation, to every regiment of the Browns, to the Grays, to the world. He set forth why the Browns, after tasting the courage of the Grays, should realize that they could not take their range. Partow had not taught him to put himself in other men's places in vain. The boy who had kept up his friendship with engine-drivers after he was an officer knew how to sink the plummet into human emotions. He reminded the Brown soldiers that there had been a providential answer to the call of "God with us!" he reminded the people of the lives that would be lost to no end but to engender hatred; he begged the army and the people not to break faith with that principle of "Not for theirs, but for ours," which had been their strength. "I should like you all to sign it--to make it simply the old form of 'the staff has the honor to report,'" he said finally. There was a hush as he finished--the hush of a deep impression when one man waits for another to speak. All were looking at him except the vice-chief, who was still staring at the table as if he had heard nothing. Yet every word was etched on his mind. The man whose name was the symbol of victory to the soldiers, who would be more than ever a hero as the news of his charge with the African Braves travelled along the lines, would go on record to his soldiers as saying that they could not take the Gray range. This was a handicap that the vice-chief did not care to accept; and he knew how to turn a phrase as well as to make a soldierly decision. He looked up smilingly to Marta. "I have decided that I had rather not be a Westerling, Miss Galland," he said. "We'll make it unanimous. And you," he burst out to Lanstron--"you legatee of old Partow; I've always said that he was the biggest man of our time. He has proved it by catching the spirit of our time and incarnating it." Vaguely, in the whirl of her joy, Marta heard the chorus of assent as the officers sprang to their feet in the elation of being at one with their chief again. Lanstron caught her arm, fearing that she was going to fall, but a burning question rose in her mind to steady her. "Then my shame--my sending men to slaughter--my sacrifice was not in vain?" she exclaimed.