Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1914-09-17

poleon and Frederick the Great and choice, he would miss the parade of the garrison for inspection by an ex-
 cellency ill order tC ask questions of man wipiag the oil off his hands with
 cotton-waste, who was far more enter- taining to him than the most spick-and. span ramrod of a sergeant. Upon being told one day that he was to go to the military school the follow ing autumn, he broke out in open re- | bellion.
 T don't want to so to the army"' he said
 i "Why?" asked his father, thinking that when the boy had to give his req sons he would soon be argued out of
 the heresy.
 It's drilling few hours day, then
 nothing to do," Arthur replied All your work waits on war and you don't know that there will ever be any war;
 It waits on something nobody wants to happen. Now, if you manufacture something, why, you see wool come out cloth, steel come out all automo- bile & you build bridge you see il i rising little by little. You're getting your results every day; you see Nour
 mistakes and your successes. You're
 making something, creating some
 thing; there's something going on all
 the while that isn't guesswork ]
 think that's what l want to say. You
 won't order me to be soldier. will
 you?"
 The father, loath to do this, called in
 the assistance of an able pleader then,
 Eugene Partow, lately become chief of
 staff of the Browns, who was an old friend of the Lanstron family. Partow turned the balance on the side of filial
 affection. He kept watch of the boy,
 but without favoring him with inil.s,
 ence. Young Lanstron, who wanted to see results, had to earn them. He real
 ized in practice the truth of Partow's saying that thtre was nothing he had
 ever learned but what could be of seIv- ice to him as an officer.
 Finding enough work to do?" Par tow would ask with a chuckle when they met in these days; for he had
 made Lanstron both chief of intelli- gence and chief aerostatic officer.
 Young Colonel Lanstron' s was the duty | of gaining the secrets of the Gray staff and keeping those of the Brown
 and organizing up-to-the-moment eff
 ciency in the new forces of the air He had remarked truly enough that the injury to his left hand served as a better reminder against the folly of wool-gathering than a string, even | large red string, tied around his fin ger. Thanks to skillful surgery, the | fingers, incapable of spreading much, were yet seryieeable and had firm I grip of the wheel as he rose from the aeroplane station on the Sunday morn ing after Martas return home for a 1 flight to La Tir.
 He knew the pattern weaving under
 his feet as one knows that of his own garden from an overlooking window. | Every detail of the staff map, ravines,
 roads, buildings, battery positions, was stitched together in the flowing reality
 of actual vision. No white posts were | necessary to tell him where the boundary between the two nations lay. The line was drawn in his brain. Now that Lanstron was the organ
 izer of the aviation corps his own | flights were rare. Mostly they were
 made to La Tir His visits to Marta
 were his holidays. All the time that
 she was absent on her journey around
 the world they had corresponded. Her letters, so revealing of herself and her | peculiar angles of observation, formed bundle sacredly preserved. Her mothers joking reference about her I girlish resolution not to marry sol | dier often recurred to him. There, he sometimes thought. was the real ob.
 stacle to his great desire. When he alighted from the plane he thrust his left hand into his blouse
 pocket He always carried it there,
 as if it were literally sewn in place.
 In moments of emotion the scared nerves would twitch as the telltale of
 his sensitiveness; and this was some
 
 matter how conscious he was of it him.
 self. He found the Galland veranda
 deserted. In response to his ring a
 maid came to the open door. Her
 face was sad, with a beauty that had
 prematurely faded. But it lighted
 pleasurably in recognition. Her hair
 was thick and tawny, lying low over
 the brow; her eyes were softly
 luminous brown and her full lips sensi- tive and yielding. Lanstron, an inti-
 mate of the Galland household, knew her story we'll and the part that Marta had played in it.
 Some four years previously, when a baby was in prospect for Minna, who
 wore no wedding ring, Mrs. Galland had been inclined to send the maid to
 an institution, where they will take
 good care of her, my dear That's
 what such institutions are for. It is
 quite scandalous for her and for us never happened in our family before!"
 Marta arched her eyebrows.
 ~'We don't know!" she exclaimed
 softly