it and wondered idly what it
meant, till Vinoy turned a retreat into a triumph, and Gambetta,
flabby, pompous, unbalanced, bawled platitudes from the Palais
Bourbon.

In three splendid armies the tide of invasion set in; the Red
Prince tearing a bloody path to Metz, the Crown Prince riding
west by south, resting in Nancy, snubbing Toul, spreading out
into the valley of the Marne to build three monuments of bloody
bones--Saint-Marie, Amanvilliers, Saint-Privat.

Metz, crouching behind Saint-Quentin and Les Bottes, turned her
anxious eyes from Thionville to Saint-Julien and back to where
MacMahon's three rockets should have starred the sky; and what
she saw was the Red Prince riding like a fiery spectre from east
to west; what she saw was the spiked helmets of the Feldwache and
the sodded parapets of Longeau. Chained and naked, the beautiful
city crouched in the tempest that was to free her forever and
give her the life she scorned, the life more bitter than death.

Something of this ominous prophecy came to Jack, standing below
the shrine of Our Lady of Morteyn, listening to the on-coming
shock of German feet, as he watched the cavalry riding past in
the glow of the setting sun.

And now the infantry burst into view, a gloomy, solid column tramp,
tramp along the road--jaegers, with their stiff fore-and-aft shakos,
dull-green tunics, and snuffy, red-striped trousers tucked into
dusty half-boots. On they came, on, on--would they never pass? At
last they were gone, somewhere into the flaming west, and now the
red sunbeams slanted on eagle crests and tipped the sea of polished
spiked helmets with fire, for a line regiment was coming, shaking
the earth with its rhythmical tramp--thud! thud! thud!

He looked across the fields to the hills beyond; more regiments,
dark masses moving against the sky, covered the landscape far as
the eye could reach; cavalry, too, were riding on the Saint-Avold
road through the woods; and beyond that, vague silhouettes of
moving wagons and horsemen, crawling out into the world of valleys
that stretched to Bar-le-Duc and Avricourt.

Oppressed, almost choked, as though a rising tide had washed
against his breast, ever mounting, seething, creeping, climbing,
he moved forward, waiting for a chance to cross the road and gain
the Chateau, where he could see the servants huddling over the
lawn, and the old vicomte, erect, motionless, on the terrace
beside his wife and Lorraine.

Already in the