is slow but sure.

Jack touched spurs to his horse and galloped out into the
Saarbrueck road. He passed a heavy, fat-necked general, sitting
on his horse, his dull, apoplectic eyes following the gestures of
a staff-officer who was tracing routes and railroads on a map
nailed against a poplar-tree. He passed other generals, deep in
consultation, absently rolling cigarettes between their
kid-gloved fingers; and everywhere dragoon patrols, gallant
troopers in blue and garance, wearing steel helmets bound with
leopard-skin above the visors. He passed ambulances, too, blue
vehicles covered with framed yellow canvas, flying the red cross.
One of the field-surgeons gave him a brief outline of the
casualties and general result of the battle, and he thanked him
and hastened on towards Saarbrueck, whence he expected to send his
despatches to Paris. But now the road was again choked with
marching infantry as far as the eye could see, dense masses,
pushing along in an eddying cloud of red dust that blew to the
east and hung across the fields like smoke from a locomotive. Men
with stretchers were passing; he saw an officer, face white as
chalk, sunburned hands clinched, lying in a canvas hand-stretcher,
borne by four men of the hospital corps. Edging his way to the
meadow, he put his horse to the ditch, cleared it, and galloped on
towards a spire that rose close ahead, outlined dimly in the smoke
and dust, and in ten minutes he was in Saarbrueck.

Up a stony street, desolate, deserted, lined with rows of closed
machine-shops, he passed, and out into another street where a
regiment of lancers was defiling amid a confusion of shouts and
shrill commands, the racket of drums echoing from wall to
pavement, and the ear-splitting flourish of trumpets mingled with
the heavy rumble of artillery and the cracking of leather
thongs. Already the pontoons were beginning to span the river
Saar, already the engineers were swarming over the three ruined
bridges, jackets cast aside, picks rising and falling--clink!
clank! clink! clank!--and the scrape of mortar and trowel on the
granite grew into an incessant sound, harsh and discordant. The
market square was impassable; infantry gorged every foot of the
stony pavement, ambulances creaked through the throng, rolling
like white ships in a tempest, signals set.

In the sea of faces around him he recognized the correspondent of
the London _Times_.

"Hello, Williams!" he called; "where the devil i