The dead man in the hospital steward's coat had been carried from the bomb-proof pit.  
Big Belt perceived that the day was working out according to its evil beginnings.... After coming in from the hollows as one risen from the dead (and transfigured in the light of field bravery) Peter Mowbray had left him again, now in the possession of strange devils.
 
Boylan was not ready to go back to Judenbach. It was almost noon. He was watching the heart of the Russian invasion of Galicia, and from its main lesion. This he knew quite as well as Dabnitz, or Doltmir, or the half-insane Kohlvihr himself. The Austrians still held. Indeed, it was not hard for them. The Russian west wing entire, and possibly part of its center, would be called upon to flank this adhering force, if Kohlvihr continued to fail. Such an action would greatly delay the general forward movement of the Russian arms.
 
“You will be without a command, General,” Doltmir suggested, at the end of the second infantry throwback, following that in which Peter had participated. “We are not disturbing them greatly in our advances. We are chiefly effective in destroying their ammunition—”
 
“Then we must continue that,” said Kohlvihr.
 
“But the troops will not continue to charge. Our reserves are in. The fresher men see the fate of the former advances. The hollows are in plain sight from the forward rifle pits.”
 
“The officers must drive them forward—”
 
“Most of the commanders are lying in the valley. The troops are them as well as the enemy—”
 
“Do you mean there is mutiny, sir?”
 
“Not of a reckonable type. These men work in the midst of action. Moreover, our troops are hard pressed. Our division has borne the brunt for three days in almost unparalleled action.”
 
“Would you advise me to leave them funking in the ?” Kohlvihr demanded.
 
“General, I would advise a report to the Commander of our failure in four advances—that we can not get sufficient men across the valley to charge the Austrian positions. Meanwhile I would order the wounded to be brought in. After that, I would suggest food for the men in the trenches.”
 
“I do not care to report four failures without a fifth trial.”
 
Doltmir turned back.
 
Big Belt was thinking fast. In all his experience, he had never seen the Inside stripped naked like this. Of course, he had observed the strategy of small bodies of troops by a swift of officers; but this was an army in itself, or had been, and on the part of Kohlvihr it was very clear that personal matters were powerfully to the . Kohlvihr was ; Kohlvihr was ambitious. Big Belt was aware that, given a free hand and a free cable, he could make Kohlvihr a monster in the eyes of the world, this merely by a display of the facts.
 
Boylan's view was cleared a little as he thought of such a . His sense of the reception of the story showed him the commanding nature of it. The thing might be done later. Peter's trouble was that he could not forget it for the present. Thoughts of work put a new energy into Boylan's thinking. These things now passing in the bomb-proof pit formed the of a narrative that had been running from the Warsaw office to the present hour.... For a moment in the story's grasp, Boylan did not hear the voice of the Dabnitz:
 
“...He is under suspicion, sir,” that young officer was saying to his chief. “In fact, the whole hospital is rotten with revolutionists, but the fact he can sing like an angel. I think if Poltneck were brought here to the lines and made to sing the folk songs—”
 
“Get him,” said Kohlvihr. “Is he under arrest?”
 
“No; as yet merely under . He was valuable in rather a unique way in the hospitals yesterday.”
 
“Bring him at once.”
 
Kohlvihr sent an order for his troops to rest and have a bite in the trenches.
 
The sorry Doltmir stepped forward again:
 
“Would it not be well to bring in our wounded from the field, sir?”
 
“We will have the field presently,” said Kohlvihr. “The sun is not hot. The lines already............