One company after another left the road at a given point, bound for the position mapped in its instructions Dellarme’s, however, went on until it was opposite the Galland house.

“We are depending on you,” the colonel said to Dellarme, giving his hand a grip.  “You are not to draw off till you get the flag.”

“No, sir,” Dellarme replied.

“Mind the signal to the batteries—­keep the men screened—­warn them not to let their first baptism of shell fire shake their nerves!” the colonel added in a final repetition of instructions already indelibly impressed on the captain’s mind.

Moving cautiously through a cut, Dellarme’s company came, about midnight, to a halt among the stubble of a wheat-field behind a knoll.  After he had bidden the men to break ranks, he crept up the incline.

“Yes, it’s there!” he whispered when he returned.  “On the crest of the knoll a cord is stretched from stake to stake,” he said, explaining the reason for what was to be done, as was his custom.  “The engineers placed it there after dusk and the frontier was closed, so that you would know just where to use your spades in the dark.  Quietly as possible!  No talking!” he kept cautioning as the men turned the soft earth, “and not higher than the cord, and lay the stubble side of the sods on the reverse so as to cover the fresh earth on the sky-line.”

When the work was done all returned behind the knoll except the sentries posted at intervals on the crest to watch.  With the aid of a small electric flash, screened by his hands, Dellarme again examined a section of the staff map that outlined the contour of the knoll in relation to the other positions.  After this he wrote in his diary the simple facts of the day’s events, concluding with a sentiment of gratitude for the honor shown to his company and a prayer that he might keep a clear head and do his duty if war came on the morrow.

“Now, every one get all the sleep he can!” he advised the men.

Stransky slept, with his head on his arm, as soundly as Eugene Aronson, his antithesis in character; the others slept no better than the men of the 128th.  The night passed without any alarm except that of their own thoughts, and they welcomed dawn as a relief from suspense.  There was no hot coffee this morning, and they washed down their rations with water from their canteens.  The old sergeant was lying beside Captain Dellarme on the crest, the sunrise in their faces.  As the mist cleared from the plain it revealed the white dots of the frontier posts in the meadow and behind them many gray figures in skirmish order, scarcely visible except through the glasses.

“It looks like business!” declared the old sergeant.

“Yes, it begins the minute they cross the line!” said Dellarme.