“There was a man out of uniform, in a gardener’s garb, in charge of the automatic,” he remarked.  “It was so puzzling that I heard of it.  You see, there is no limit to what a chief of staff may know.”

“Yes, our gardener,” she replied.

“Your gardener!  Why, how was that?  Wasn’t he in the reserves if he were a Brown?  Wasn’t he called to the colors at the outbreak of the war?”

In spite of himself the questions were somewhat sharp.  They seemed to take Marta by surprise, which, however, was evanescent.

“I wonder!” she said, as interested as Westerling in the suggestion.  “Something a soldier would think of immediately and a woman wouldn’t.  I know that we lost our gardener.”

That was all.  She did not attempt any further explanation or enlarge on the subject, but let it go as an inquiry unexplained in the course of conversation.

Had Westerling been inclined to pursue it further he would have been interrupted by the arrival of a figure with a bandaged leg and head which came hobbling cheerfully around the corner of the house on crutches, escorted by an infantryman.  The guard saluted and withdrew into the background.  Hugo saluted and removed his cap and looked at Westerling with the faintest turn of a smile on his lips, which plainly spoke his quizzical appreciation of the fact that he was in the presence of dazzling heights for a private.

Marta had a single glance from him—­a glance of peculiar inquiry and astonishment, sweeping over the tea things fairly into her eyes.  Then it was gone.  He might have been the most dutiful and respectful soldier of the five millions as he waited on the head of the five millions to speak.

Westerling read the four charges.  Then he asked the stereotyped question: 

“What have you to say to them?”

When he looked up from the paper he saw a face that was a mask, a gentle, pleasant mask, and blue eyes looking quite steadily into his own with a sort of well-established and dreamy fatalism.

“Nothing, sir,” said Hugo respectfully.

Westerling frowned.  Though a confession of guilt simplified everything, perhaps he frowned to find no embarrassment in his presence in the private; perhaps he apprehended impertinence in the soft blue eyes.

“You know what that means—­the charges sustained?”

“Yes, sir!”

“And you have nothing to say?” Westerling’s frown deepened.  There was an undercurrent of urgency in his tone.  This mild culprit, waiting for the wheels of justice to roll over him without a protest, gave him no light as to a policy that should apply to other cases.  He resented, too, any suggestion of readiness for martyrdom No man of power who is anything of a politician and not a fool likes to make martyrs.  “Nothing?” he repeated.  “Nothing at all in your own behalf?”

A faint expression appeared on the mask.  So insistently could Hugo’s mask hold attention that Westerling noted even a slight, thoughtful drawing down of the brow and one corner of the mouth.  He could not conceive that the laws of gravity could be upset or that a private would undertake to have fun at the expense of a chief of staff.