ght clad in steel
and armed from head to foot, going out to fight a peasant in homespun.
And you're the peasant in homespun, Carstairs."

"England is slow, I admit, but when she once takes hold she never lets
go."

"Unless she takes hold, when there's something to take hold of it's no
use."

"Stop quarreling with him, Scott," said Wharton. "That's my job, and you
can't take it from me. I've set two tasks for myself, one to defeat the
German army and one to change Carstairs, and I tell you confidentially,
John, that I think the defeat of the German army will prove the easier
of the two."

"Look how those banks of fog are rolling up," said Carstairs. "The rain
is decreasing, but in a quarter of an hour we won't be able to see a
thing twenty yards away."

"We shall welcome the fog," said John, who was beginning to feel now
that he was on equal terms with the other two.

"So, we should," said Carstairs, "but does fog conduct sound well?"

"I don't know," replied John. "Why?"

"Because I think I hear a noise a long distance to the right. It has a
rolling, grinding quality, but that doesn't help me to tell what makes
it."

The three stopped, and with all their senses alert listened. Both John
and Wharton heard the sound, but they were unable to tell its nature.
The fog meanwhile was closing in, heavy and almost impenetrable.

"I think," said John, "we ought to see what it is. The thing is
projecting itself squarely across our path. We've got a mission, but the
more news we take the better."

Wharton and Carstairs agreed with him, and finding a low place in the
hedge that ran beside the road they forced their way through it. They
were remounted now, and the rest had made the horses fit for either a
fight or a race.

They rode across the field and then through a belt of open forest, but
the fog was so dense they were compelled to keep close together lest
they lose one another. The rolling sound increased and now other notes
came with it. A little farther and they saw dim lights in the fog.

"An army," whispered Carstairs, "and the torch-bearers are showing the
way through the fog. Now what kind of an army is it?"

"German of course," said Wharton. "We know well enough that no French
force is near here. It's a part of the flood that's bearing down on
France and Belgium."

"There are more trees here to the right," said John. "Let's enter them
and get a better view. Even if we were seen we could escape anybody