"They're reservists, and last line men, at that," said Stepan. "A lot of them wear spectacles, you'll notice, and they're the older men, who aren't fit to work in the field. A lot of those chaps would keel over if they had to spend a night in a trench half full of water, or to march twenty miles without a halt. But they are all right for this sort of work. You can't count on them for fighting, but they do the work that would otherwise take up a lot of fighting men."
"Will there be anything for us to do, Stepan?"
"I think a great deal. I haven't heard anything yet, except that we are to stay."
"Do you think it's safe for me? I don't think I care much, but I mean if they were looking for me in Semlin, isn't there a chance that I'll be picked up now?"
"I don't think so. That was Hallo's doing, you see. He's disappeared, and so there's nothing to urge them to go after you."
"Where is Hallo? I was afraid that perhaps he would have been found and set free when the Austrians came."
"Not a bit of it! He's too valuable to be allowed to get off so easily—or to be shot either," answered Steve.
"Then he was taken away?"
"Yes. He's being very carefully looked after in the interior now—in Nissa or Nish, probably. Dick, suppose you go and see your consul here again—Mr. Hampton. I'd like to know what he thinks about things. And you can consult him, too, about your own position," Steve replied.
"So you're still here, are you?" said Mr. Hampton. "I thought you might have run away with the Servians. But you did well to stay. I'm afraid the Austrians are going right through this country now, the way a circus acrobat goes through a paper hoop. It's the old story—the little country is left to perish, like Belgium and Servia, while the big fellows attend to their own knitting."