As he turned away he looked up, and a glance of definite and unfaltering recognition was exchanged between the two men. Feller's hat was promptly lowered enough to form a barrier between their eyes. His face was singularly expressionless. It seemed withered, clayish, like the walls of a furnace in which the fire has died out. After a few steps he paused before another rose-bush. Meanwhile, both had swept the surroundings in a sharp, covert survey. They had the garden to themselves.
"Gustave!" Lanstron exclaimed under his breath.
"Lanny!" exclaimed the gardener, turning over a branch of the rose-bush. He seemed unwilling to risk talking openly with Lanstron.
"You look the good workman in his Sunday best to a T!" said Lanstron.
"Being stone-deaf," returned Feller, with a trace of drollery in his voice, "I hear very well—at times. Tell me"—his whisper was quivering with eagerness—"shall we fight? Shall we fight?"
"We are nearer to it than we have ever been in our time," Lanstron replied.
The hat still shaded Feller's face, his stoop was unchanged, but the branch in his hand shook.
"Honest?" he exclaimed. "Oh, the chance of it! the chance of it!"
"Gustave!" Lanstron's voice, still low, came in a gust of sympathy, and the pocket which concealed his hand gave a nervous twitch as if it held something alive and distinct from his own being. "The trial wears on you! You feel you must break out?"
"No, I'm game—game, I tell you!" Still Feller spoke to the branch, which was steady now in a firm hand. "No, I don't grow weary of the garden and the isolation as long as there is hope. But being deaf, always deaf, and yet hearing everything! Always stooped, even when the bugles are sounding to the artillery garrison—that is somewhat tiresome!"