along for his own use, and had sacrificed all his savings for special
field-glasses in order to be quite on the safe side and know exactly how
many enemy lives he had snuffed out. Since they had come within close
sound of the firing he had grown almost merry, even talkative, impelled
by a nervous zeal, like an enthusiastic hunter who has picked up the
trail. The captain saw him going in and out among the massed men, and
turned away, hating to see how the fellow plagued his poor weary men,
and went at them precisely like a sheep dog gathering in the herd,
barking shrilly all the while. Long before the ten minutes were up, the
company would be in formation, Weixler's impatience guaranteed that. And
then--then there would be no reason any more for longer delay, no
further possibility of putting off the fatal decision.

Captain Marschner took a deep breath and looked up at the sky with wide-
open eyes that had a peculiarly intent look in them. In the foreground,
beyond the steep hill that still hid the actual field of battle from
view, the invisible machine guns were beating in breathless haste; and
scarcely a fathom above the edge of the slope small, yellowish-white
packages floated in thick clusters, like snowballs flung high in the
air--the smoke of the barrage fire through which he had to lead his men.

It was not a short way. Two kilometers still from the farther spur of
the hill to the entrance of the communication trenches, and straight
across open fields without cover of any kind. Assuredly no small task
for a company of the last class of reservists, for respectable family
men who had been in the field but a few hours, and who were only now to
smell powder for the first time and receive their baptism of fire. For
Weixler, whose mind was set on nothing but the medal for distinguished
service, which he wanted to obtain as soon as possible--for a twenty-
year-old fighting cock who fancied the world rotated about his own, most