“She asks that for me!”

The peculiar intimate fervor of the exclamation sprang from a Feller in an officer’s uniform who could now move in Marta’s world.  Lanstron hurried on to explain the nature of the next attack.

“If we repulse them we are going to throw in a ram of our own,” he said.  “We’re going to take the aggressive for the moment.  It is the only sure policy for successful defence.”

“Right!  Now you’re talking.  We learned that principle at school, didn’t we?”

“And that means a bigger chance for you, Gustave.  We are bringing up reserve artillery and making new dispositions.  I am going to give you charge of the field-guns.  But the chief of artillery will tell you about your work.”

“This is heaven, Lanny!  How am I ever going to—­”

“There, no thanks, Gustave.  You are the man.  It is a time when only efficiency must be considered.”

“Then I have made good!  Then I’ve been worthy of my opportunity!  I’d rather be a good gunner than a king.  I’ll eat this new work and smack my lips for more.  Tell Miss Galland that every shell that hits the mark is a thought from the old gardener for her.  Six weeks ago trimming rose-bushes and now—­this is life!  La, la, la!  There’s been romance and destiny in the whole business for us both, Lanny.  And you—­you are acting chief of staff!  I forgot to congratulate you, Your Excellency.  Your Excellency!  Think of that!  But it’s no surprise to me.  Didn’t we go to school together?  How could any one ever go to school with me and not be a great man?  And I’m wearing a flower in my buttonhole!  La, la, la!”

All that night and day before the night set for the attack, while the guns were being emplaced and the infantry formed in a gray carpet behind the slopes, a chill, misty rain fell, which the devout of the Grays might say proved that God was with them rather than with the Browns; for it screened their movements from the Brown lookouts.  The judge’s son and Peterkin and others of Fracasse’s company had finished their mine; the fuses were laid.  There was no dry place for a seat in their flooded redoubt and they had to stand, eating cold rations and shivering in their filthy, wet clothes.  The whole army was drenched; the whole army shivered.

If only the air did not clear when darkness fell!  The last thing the staff of the Grays wanted was to see a star in the sky.  Had they believed in prayer they would have gone on their knees for a black fog, unaware that all that they would hide had been made known to the Browns through Marta almost from the hour that the preparations for the attack were begun.

With darkness, the rain ceased; but the mist remained a thick mantle over the landscape, impenetrable to the watchful search-lights of the Browns, which never stopped playing from sunset to dawn.  The gray carpet of the reserves that were to form Westerling’s ram moved over the slopes, dipping and rising with the convolutions of the earth, with no word spoken except the repeated whispered warnings of silence from the officers.  Sweeping on up toward the redoubts, it found that parallels and trenches had been filled to give footing for the swifter impulse of the tide, once it was started for the heights.