Stone axe, spear and bow, javelin and broadsword, blunderbuss and
creaking cannon--all the weapons of all stages in the art of war--had
gone trooping past. Now had come the speck in the sky, straight on, like
some projectile born of the ether.

"Beside the old baron, we are parvenus," Marta would say. "And what a
parvenu the baron would have been to the Roman aristocrat!"

"Our family is old enough--none older in the province!" Mrs. Galland
would reply. "Marta, how your mind does wander! I'd get a headache just
contemplating the things you are able to think of in five minutes."

The first Galland had built a house on the land that his king had given
him for one of the most brilliant feats of arms in the history of the
pass. He had the advantage of the baron in that he could read and write,
though with difficulty. Marta had an idea that he was not presentable at
a tea-table; however, he must have been more so than the baron, who, she
guessed, would have grabbed all the cakes on the plate as a sheer matter
of habit in taking what he wanted unless a stronger than he interfered.

Even the tower, raised to the glory of an older family whose
descendants, if any survived, were unaware of their lineage, had become
known as the Galland tower. The Gallands were rooted in the soil of the
frontier; they were used to having war's hot breath blow past their
door; they were at home in the language and customs of two peoples;
theirs was a peculiar tradition, which Marta had absorbed with her first
breath. Every detail of her circumscribed existence reminded her that
she was a Galland.