"I am going up to speak to your father," said Jack, carelessly;
"may I?"

Interrupt her father! Lorraine fairly gasped.

"Stay here," he added, with the faintest touch of authority in
his tone; and, before she could protest, he had sped away up the
staircase and round and round the long circular stairs that led
to the single turret.

A little out of breath, he knocked at the door which faced the
top step. There was no answer. He rapped again, impatiently. A
voice startled him: "Lorraine, I am busy!"

"Open," called Jack; "I must see you!"

"I am busy!" replied the marquis. Irritation and surprise were in
his tones.

"Open!" called Jack again; "there is no time to lose!"

Suddenly the door was jerked back and the marquis appeared, pale,
handsome, his eyes cold and blue as icebergs.

"Monsieur Marche--" he began, almost discourteously.

"Pardon," interrupted Jack; "I am going into your room. I wish to
look out of that turret window. Come also--you must know what to
expect."

Astonished, almost angry, the Marquis de Nesville followed him to
the turret window.

"Oh," said Jack, softly, staring out into the sunshine, "it is
time, is it not, that we knew what was going on along the
frontier? Look there!"

On the horizon vast shapeless clouds lay piled, gigantic coils
and masses of vapour, dark, ominous, illuminated by faint, pallid
lights that played under them incessantly; and over all towered
one tall column of smoke, spreading above like an enormous
palm-tree. But this was not all. The vast panorama of hill and
valley and plain, cut by roads that undulated like narrow satin
ribbons on a brocaded surface, was covered with moving objects,
swarming, inundating the landscape. To the south a green hill
grew black with the human tide, to the north long lines and
oblongs and squares moved across the land, slowly, almost
imperceptibly--but they were moving, always moving east.

"It is an army coming," said the marquis.

"It is a rout," said Jack, quietly.

The marquis moved suddenly, as though to avoid a blow.

"What troops are those?" he asked, after a silence.

"It is the French army," replied Jack. "Have you not heard the
cannonade?"

"No--my machines make some noise when I'm working. I hear it now.
What is that cloud--a fire?"

"It is the battle cloud."

"And the smoke on the horizon?"

"The smoke from the guns. They are fighting beyond
Saarbrueck--yes, beyond Pfalzburg and Woerth; they are figh