fashion.  The survivors among his men were as lean and dirty as Fracasse’s, but, never having expected to reach the enemy’s capital, war had brought few illusions.  They had known sleepless vigils, but not much digging since they had fallen back on the main line into the fortifications which, with all resources at command, the engineers had built before the war.  And the Browns still held the range!  The principal fortifications of Engadir and every other vital point of the main line was theirs.  All that the enemy had gained in his latest attack were a few minor positions.

“But we’re always losing positions!” complained one of the men.  “Little by little they are getting possession.”

“They say the offensive always wins,” said another.

“Five against three!  They count on numbers,” said Lieutenant Tom Fragini.

“There you go, Tom!  Any other pessimists or anarchists want to be heard?” called out Stransky.  “Just how long, at the present rate, will it take them to get the whole range?  There’s a limit to the number of even five millions.”

“Yes, but if they ever break through in one place and get their guns up—­”

“As you’ve said before, Tom!”

“As we want to keep saying—­as we want to keep fighting our damnedest to make sure they won’t,” Tom explained.

“Yes, that’s it!” declared a chorus.

“That’s it, no matter what we pay!” declared Stransky.  “We’re not going back there except in hearses!” He swung his hand in a semicircle toward the distant hills, gold and purple in their dying foliage under the autumn sunlight.

Then the telephone in the redoubt brought some news.  The staff begged to inform the army that the enemy’s casualties in the last three days had been two hundred thousand!  Immediately everybody was talking at once in Stransky’s parliament, as he sometimes called that company of which he was, in the final analysis, unlimited monarch.

“How do they know?”

“Do you think it’s fake?”

“That sums up to pretty near a million!”

“My God!  Think of it—­a million!”

“We’re whittling them down!”

“It doesn’t make any difference whether Partow or Lanstron is chief of staff!”

“They’re paying!”

“Paying for our fellows that they’ve killed!  Paying for being in the wrong!”

“Let’s have the song again!  Come on!”

“Yes, the song!  The song!”

“No; hold on!” cried Tom.  “Not because men are killed!”

“That’s right, that’s right!” said Stransky.  “After all, they’re our brothers.”  It was the first time since he had undergone the transformation which the war had wrought in him that he had mentioned any of his world-brotherhood ideas.  “I still believe in that.  We’re fighting for that!” he concluded.

With the ready change of subject of soldiers who have been long in company, they were soon talking about other things—­things that concerned the living.