f voices, as if millions of tiny people were
calling us from the ends and outer edges of the earth."

"There is a throbbing, too. Do you notice it?"

"Yes--like one's heart at night. Ah, now it comes nearer--oh,
nearer! nearer! Oh, what can it be?"

He knew now; he knew that indefinable battle--rumour that steals
into the senses long before it is really audible. It is not a
sound--not even a vibration; it is an immense foreboding that
weights the air with prophecy.

"From the south and east," he repeated; "from the Landesgrenze."

"The frontier?"

"Yes. Hark!"

"I hear."

"From the frontier," he said again. "From the river Lauter and
from Wissembourg."

"What is it?" she whispered, close beside him.

"Cannon!"

Yes, it was cannon--they knew it now--cannon throbbing,
throbbing, throbbing along the horizon where the crags of the
Geisberg echoed the dull thunder and shook it far out across the
vineyards of Wissembourg, where the heights of Kapsweyer,
resounding, hurled back the echoes to the mountains in the north.

"Why--why does it seem to come nearer?" asked Lorraine.

"Nearer?" He knew it had come nearer, but how could he tell her
what that meant?

"It is a battle--is it not?" she asked again.

"Yes, a battle."

She said nothing more, but stood leaning along the wall, her white
forehead pressed against the edge of the raised window-sash. Outside,
the little birds had grown suddenly silent; there was a stillness
that comes before a rain; the leaves on the shrubbery scarcely moved.

And now, nearer and nearer swelled the rumour of battle,
undulating, quavering over forest and hill, and the muttering of
the cannon grew to a rumble that jarred the air.

As currents in the upper atmosphere shift and settle north,
south, east, west, so the tide of sound wavered and drifted, and
set westward, flowing nearer and nearer and louder and louder,
until the hoarse, crashing tumult, still vague and distant, was
cut by the sharper notes of single cannon that spoke out,
suddenly impetuous, in the dull din.

The whole Chateau was awake now; maids, grooms, valets,
gardeners, and keepers were gathering outside the iron grille of
the park, whispering together and looking out across the fields.

There was nothing to see except pastures and woods, and
low-rounded hills crowned with vineyards. Nothing more except a
single strangely shaped cloud, sombre, slender at the base, but
spreading at the top like a palm.