nce did not
cause any decrease in the crash and roar. Either his imagination
supplied it, or the battle was increasing in violence. He rode on, and
then a new sound greeted him. It was the thunder of another battle, or
rather a link in the chain of battles. He was approaching the position
of a French army which had been assailed with a fury equal to that from
which the British suffered.

John was merely one of many messengers and the French commander smiled
grimly when he read his dispatch.

"Look!" he said, pointing a long arm.

John saw another vast gray host, rolling forward, crushing and
invincible. At some points the French had already lost ground, and they
were fighting a desperate, but losing battle. No help could come from
them, and he believed that the French armies farther east were in the
same mortal danger.

John received his return dispatch. He knew without the telling what was
in it. The French would certainly urge the British to fall back. If they
did not do so they would be lost, the French line in its turn would be
crumpled up, and France was conquered.

It was given to John, a youth, as he rode back in the red light of the
late sun, to know that a crisis of the world was at hand. He was
imaginative. He had read much and now he saw. It struck upon him like a
flash of lightning. Along that vast front in face of the French armies
and the British there must be a million troops, armed and trained as no
other troops ever were, and driven forward by a military autocracy which
unceasingly had taught the doctrine, that might is right. The kings, the
princes, the dukes and the generals who believed it was their right to
rule the world were out there, and it was their hour. By morning they
might be masters of Europe.

He had all the clear vision of a young prophet. He saw the sword and
cannon triumphant, and he saw the menace to his own land. He shuddered
and turned cold, but in a minute warmth returned to his body and he
galloped back with the message. Others had returned with messages like
his own, and, giving up his horse, he rejoined his comrades.

Carstairs and Wharton were gloomy. The ground that had been the front
line of the British was now under the German foot. The German weight,
irresistible in appearance, had proved so in fact, and far to left and
right those terrible horns were pushing farther and farther around the
flanks, John now saw the German army as a gigantic devil fish enveloping
its