down from countless miles of graveyard.

"Weasel!" bawled the lieutenant. "Lead off at a thousand yards with your scouts. Bonchamp! Bring up the rear and shoot all stragglers. Chipper and Herrero, wide out on the flanks. Fourth Brigade! Forward!"

The wind mourned along the deserted ridge, searching out something to twitch. But nearly all signs of the camp had been destroyed, just as there would be left no mark along the line of march by which another force could follow and attack. The wind had to content itself with the cloak of the dead man which it lifted off the legs time and again, and the gaudy ribbon which it rippled over the cooling face.

Malcolm matched the lieutenant's stride, glancing now and then at the man's quiet profile. Malcolm could not rid himself of the vision of the duke trying to stop a bullet with his hands and screaming his pleas for life.

"Lieutenant," he said cautiously and respectfully, "if ... if one of your men came down with soldier's sickness ... would you shoot him like that?" Malcolm clearly meant himself.

The lieutenant did not glance at him. A shadow of distaste dropped over him and passed. "It has happened."

Malcolm avoided the finality of that statement. "But how would you know? How do you know that that fellow back there had it? Wouldn't gas—"

"Yes. It would."

"Then ... then—"

"You've seen men die of soldier's sickness."

"Of course."

"You were in England when the first waves of it came. Over here, when one man got it, his squad got it shortly after. No one knows how it travels. Some say by lice, some by air. There was only one way to save a company and that was to execute the squad."

"But ... but some are immune!"

"Maybe. The doctors who tried to make the tests died of it, also. Let's have an end of this, Malcolm."

They walked in silence for some time and gradually forgot about it. They had come to a broad valley matted with young trees. Here and there stone walls showed brokenly 

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