“It cannot be a retreat!” said the vice-chief.

“Hardly.  That is inconceivable of Westerling at this time,” Lanstron replied.  “The bull charges when wounded.  It is clear that he means to make another attack.  These troops on the march across country are isolated from any immediate service.”

It was Lanstron’s way to be suggestive; to let ideas develop in council and orders follow as out of council.

“The chance!” exclaimed some one.

“The chance!” others said in the same breath.  “The God-given chance for a quick blow!  The chance!  We attack!  We attack!”

It was the most natural conception to a military tactician, though any man who made it his own might have builded a reputation on it if he knew how to get the ear of the press.  Their faces were close to Lanstron as they leaned toward him eagerly.  He seemed not to see them but to be looking at Partow’s chair.  In imagination Partow was there in the life—­Partow with the dome forehead, the pendulous cheeks, the shrewd, kindly eyes.  A daring risk, this!  What would Partow say?  Lanstron always asked himself this in a crisis:  What would Partow say?

“Well, my boy, why are you hesitating?” Partow demanded.  “I don’t know that I’d have taken my long holiday and left you in charge if I’d thought you’d be losing your nerve as you are this minute.  Wasn’t it part of my plan—­my dream—­that plan I gave you to read in the vaults, to strike if a chance, this very chance, were to come?  Hurry up!  Seconds count!”

“Yes, a chance to end the killing for good and all!” said Lanstron, coming abruptly out of his silence.  “We’ll take it and strike hard.”

The staff bent over the map, Lanstron’s finger flying from point to point, while ready expert answers to his questions were at his elbow and the wires sang out directions that made a drenched and shivering soldiery Who had been yielding and holding and never advancing grow warm with the thought of springing from the mire of trenches to charge the enemy.  And one, Gustave Feller, in command of a brigade of field-guns—­the mobile guns that could go forward rumbling to the horses’ trot—­saw his dearly beloved batteries swing into a road in the moonlight.

“La, la, la!  The worm will turn!” he clucked.  “It’s a merry, gambling old world and I’m right fond of it—­so full of the unexpected for the Grays!  That lead horse is a little lame, but he’ll last the night through.  Lots of lame things will!  Who knows?  Maybe we’ll be cleaning the mud off our boots on the white posts of the frontier to-morrow!  A whole brigade mine!  I live!  You old brick, Lanny!  This time we are going to spank the enemy on the part of his anatomy where spanks are conventionally given.  La, la, la!”

* * * * *