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!”

He followed her into the house and dropped on a leather chair before a shining table in a room panelled with oak, wondering at her and at himself.  No woman of Marta’s world had ever spoken in that way to him.  But it was good to sit down.  Then a maid with a sad, winsome face and tender eyes brought him wine and bread and cold meat and jam.  He gulped down a glassful of the wine; he ate with great mouthfuls in the ravenous call of healthy, exhausted tissues, while the maid stood by to cut more bread.

“When it comes to eating after fighting—­”

He looked up when the first pangs of hunger were assuaged.  Enormous, broad-shouldered, physical, his cheeks flushed with the wine, his eyes opened wide and brilliant with the fire that was in his nature—­eyes that spoke the red business of anarchy and war.

“Say, but you’re pretty!”

Springing up, he caught her hand and made to kiss her in the brashness of impulse.  Minna struck him a stinging blow in the face.  He received it as a mastiff would receive a bite from a pup, and she stood her ground, her eyes challenging his fearlessly.

“So you are like that!” he said thoughtfully.  “It was a good one, and you meant it, too.”

“Decidedly!” she answered.  “There’s more where that came from!”

“As I was telling the Grays this afternoon!  Good for you!” He sat down again composedly, while she glared at him.  “I’m still hungry.  I’ve had wine enough; but would you cut me another slice of bread?”