By this time the colonel commanding the regiment, who had noticed the excitement from a distance, appeared, forcing a gap for his passage through the crowd with sharp words.  He, too, recognized Lanstron.  After they had shaken hands, the colonel scowled as he heard the situation explained, with the old sergeant, still holding fast to Stransky’s collar, a capable and insistent witness for the prosecution; while Stransky, the fire in his eyes dying to coals, stared straight ahead.

“It is only a suggestion, of course,” said Lanstron, speaking quite as a spectator to avoid the least indication of interference with the colonel’s authority, “but it seems possible that Stransky has clothed his wrongs in a garb that could never set well on his nature if he tried to wear it in practice.  He is really an individualist.  Enraged, he would fight well.  I should like nothing better than a force of Stranskys if I had to defend a redoubt in a last stand.”

“Yes, he might fight.”  The colonel looked hard at Stransky’s rigid profile, with its tight lips and chin as firm as if cut out of stone.  “You never know who will fight in the pinch, they say.  But that’s speculation.  It’s the example that I have to deal with.”

“He is not of the insidious, plotting type.  He spoke his mind openly,” suggested Lanstron.  “If you give him the limit of the law, why, he becomes a martyr to persecution.  I should say that his remarks might pass for barrack-room gassing.”

“Very well,” said the colonel, taking the shortest way out of the difficulty.  “We will excuse the first offence.”

“Yes, sir!” said the sergeant mechanically as he released his grip of the offender.  “We had two anarchists in my company in Africa,” he observed in loyal agreement with orders.  “They fought like devils.  The only trouble was to keep them from shooting innocent natives for sport.”

Stransky’s collar was still crumpled on the nape of his neck.  He remained stock-still, staring down the bridge of his nose.  For a full minute he did not vouchsafe so much as a glance upward over the change in his fortunes.  Then he looked around at Lanstron gloweringly.

“I know who you are!” he said.  “You were born to the purple.  You have had education, opportunity, position—­everything that you and your kind want to keep for your kind.  You are smarter than the others.  You would hang a man with spider-webs instead of hemp.  But I won’t fight for you!  No, I won’t!”

He threw back his head with a determination in his defiance so intense that it had a certain kind of dignity that freed it of theatrical affectation.

“Yes, I was fortunate; but perhaps nature was not altogether unkind to you,” said Lanstron.  “In Napoleonic times, Stransky, I think you might even have carried a marshal’s baton in your knapsack.”

“You—­what rot!” A sort of triumph played around Stransky’s full lips and his jaw shot out challengingly.  “No, never against my comrades on the other side of the border!” he concluded, his dogged stare returning.