But she hurried on, impelled by she knew not what, through the dining-room, and, coming to the veranda, stopped short, with dilating eyes and a cry of grievous shock.  Two of his men were carrying Dellarme back from the breastwork where they had caught him in their arms as he fell.  They laid him gently on the sward with a knapsack under his head.  His face grew whiter with the flow of blood from the red hole in the right breast of his blouse.  Then he opened his lips and whispered to the doctor:  “How is it?” Something in his eyes, in the tone of that faint question, required the grace of a soldier’s truth in answer.

“Bad!” said the doctor.

“Then, good-by!” And his head fell to one side, his lips set in his cheery smile.

Had ever any martyr shown a finer spirit dying for any cause?  Marta wondered.  She felt the sublimity of a great moment, an inexorable sadness.  She knew that she should never forget that cheery smile or that white face.  What was danger to anybody?  What was death if you had seen how he had died?

His company was a company with his smile out of its heart and in its place blank despair.  Many of the men had stopped firing.  Some had even run back to look at him and stood, caps off, backs to the enemy, miserable in their grief.  Others leaned against the parapet, rifles out of hand, staring and dazed.

“They have killed our captain!”

“They’ve killed our captain!”—­still a captain to them.  A general’s stars could not have raised him a cubit in their estimation.

“And once we called him ‘Baby Dellarme,’ he was so young and bashful!  Him a baby?  He was a king!”

“Men, get to your places!” cried the surviving lieutenant rather hopelessly, with no Dellarme to show him what to do; and Marta saw that few paid any attention to him.

In that minute of demoralization the Grays had their chance, but only for a minute.  A voice that seemed to speak some uncontrollable thought of her own broke in, and it rang with the authority and leadership of a mature officer’s command, even though coming from a gardener in blue blouse and crownless straw hat.

“Your rifles, your rifles, quick!” called Feller.  “We’re only beginning to fight!”

And then another voice in a bull roar, Stransky’s: 

“Avenge his death!  They’ve got to kill the last man of us for killing him!  Revenge! revenge!”

That cry brought back to the company all the fighting spirit of the cheery smile and with it another spirit—­for Dellarme’s sake!—­which he had never taught them.

“Make them pay!”

“He was told to stay till noon!”

“They’ll find us here at noon, alive or dead!”

Stransky picked up one of several cylindrical objects that were lying at his feet.

“He wouldn’t use this—­he was too soft-hearted—­but I will!” he cried, and flung a hand-grenade, and then a second, over the breastwork.  The explosions were followed by agonized groans from the Grays hugging the lower side of the terrace.  For this they had crawled across the road in the night—­to find themselves unable to move either way and directly under the flashes of the Browns’ rifles.