“Yes, go on, Fragini,” said Dellarme.  “Attend to your men.  Everybody in his place.  We’ll get the old man away on a litter.”

“Yes, you go or you ain’t any grandson of mine!” shouted the old man in a high-pitched voice.  “Just been promoted, too!  You’ll be up for insubordination in a minute, you young whelp!”

Dellarme meant to look after grandfather, but his attention was engrossed in seeing that his men withdrew cautiously, for every minute that he was able to delay the enemy’s charge was vital.  He himself picked up a rifle in order to increase the volume of fire when the third section was starting.  As the fourth and last section drew off he uttered his first cry of triumph of the day as his final look revealed the Grays still in place.  But they would not wait long once all fire from the knoll had ceased.  Stransky, who was in the fourth section, remained to give a parting shot.

“Good-by, d——­ you!” he called to the Grays.  “You’ll hear more from me later!”

Then Dellarme saw that grandfather had not yet been carried away and no litters remained.  What was to be done?  Grandfather was prompt with his own view.

“Just leave me behind.  I’ve done my work, I tell you!” he declared.

“Can’t lose you, grandpop!” said Stransky.

Quickly shifting his pack to the ground, he squatted with his back to the old man.

“I ain’t going to—­and you’re a traitor, anyway; that’s what you are!”

“No back talk!  No politics in this!” Stransky replied.  “Get up!  You carry your skin and I’ll carry your bones.  Get up quick!”

With Dellarme’s authoritative assistance grandfather mounted.  Then Dellarme put Stransky’s pack on his own back.

“Let me carry your rifle, too,” he said to Stransky as they started.

“Not much!” answered Stransky.  “I was just married to that rifle this morning.  We’re on our honeymoon trip and getting fairly well acquainted, and expect shortly to settle down to a busy domestic life.”

He set off at a lope and gained the rear of the section in his first burst of speed.  As the other men got their second wind, however, Stransky began to puff and they soon drew away from him.

“Put me down!  I ain’t going to depend on any traitor that insulted the flag!” protested grandfather.

“That’s the way!  Call out to me now and then so I’ll know you’re there,” said Stransky.  “You’re so light I mightn’t know it if you fell off.”

Dellarme did not think it right to expose the last section by asking it to delay.  Shepherd of his flock and miser of his pieces of gold, now that their work was done the one thing he wanted in the world was that they should escape without further punishment.  Already the van of the first section was disappearing into the cut in safety.  But the fourth section, which had held to the last, had yet a thousand yards to go over a path bare of cover except a single small bush.  At any moment he expected to hear a cheer from the knoll, and what would follow the cheer he knew only too well.  Yet he tarried with Stransky out of one man’s impulse not to desert another in danger.  At the same time he was wroth with the old man for having made such a nuisance of himself.