"That won't take long," he answered. "My father, so far as I could identify him, died in jail and my mother of drink."
"That was hardly to the purple!" observed Lanstron thoughtfully.
"No, to the red!" answered Stransky savagely.
"I mean that it was hardly inclined to make you take ft roseate view of life as a beautiful thing in a well-ordered world where favors of fortune are evenly distributed," continued Lanstron.
"Rather to make me rejoice in the hope of a new order of things—the re-creation of society!" Stransky uttered the sentiment with the triumphant pride of a pupil who knows his text-book thoroughly.
By this time the colonel commanding the regiment, who had noticed the excitement from a distance, appeared, forcing a gap for his passage through the crowd with sharp words. He, too, recognized Lanstron. After they had shaken hands, the colonel scowled as he heard the situation explained, with the old sergeant, still holding fast to Stransky's collar, a capable and insistent witness for the prosecution; while Stransky, the fire in his eyes dying to coals, stared straight ahead.
"It is only a suggestion, of course," said Lanstron, speaking quite as a spectator to avoid the least indication of interference with the colonel's authority, "but it seems possible that Stransky has clothed his wrongs in a garb that could never set well on his nature if he tried to wear it in practice. He is really an individualist. Enraged, he would fight well. I should like nothing better than a force of Stranskys if I had to defend a redoubt in a last stand."
"Yes, he might fight." The colonel looked hard at Stransky's rigid profile, with its tight lips and chin as firm as if cut out of stone. "You never know who will fight in the pinch, they say. But that's speculation. It's the example that I have to deal with."
"He is not of the insidious, plotting type. He spoke his mind openly," suggested Lanstron. "If you give him the limit of the law, why, he becomes a martyr to persecution. I should say that his remarks might pass for barrack-room gassing."
"Very well," said the colonel, taking the shortest way out of the difficulty. "We will excuse the first offence."