sia came into the picture, yet
he feared that France would break at the outset of the campaign, while
Austria might hold Russia in check long enough to enable Germany to work
her murderous design. Be it remembered, he could not possibly estimate
the fine and fierce valour of the resistance offered by Belgium. It
seemed to him that the Teuton hordes must already be hacking their way
to the coast, leaving sufficient men and guns to contain the Belgian
fortresses, and halting only when the white cliffs of England were
visible across the Channel.

If his anxious thoughts wandered, however, and a gnawing doubt ate into
his soul lest the British fleet might, as the Germans in Vise claimed,
have been taken at a disadvantage, he did not allow his eyes and ears to
neglect the duties of the hour.

A fall in the temperature had condensed the river mist, and the air near
the ground was much clearer now than at eight o'clock. The breeze, too,
gathered the dust into wraiths and scurrying wisps through which
glimpses of the sloping uplands toward Aix were obtainable. During one
of these unhampered moments he caught sight of something so weird and
uncanny that he was positively startled.

A sorrow-laden, waxen-hued face seemed to peer at him for an instant,
and then vanish. But there could be no face so high in the air,
twenty feet or more above the heads of a Prussian regiment bawling
"_Deutschland, Deutschland, ueber alles_." The land was level XXXX
thereabouts. The apparition, consequently, must be a mere trick of the
imagination. Yet he saw, or fancied he saw, that same spectral face
twice again at intervals of a few seconds, and was vexed with himself
for allowing his bemused senses to yield to some supernatural influence.
Then the vision came a fourth time, and a thrill ran through every fibre
in his body.

Because there could be no mistake now. The face, so mournful, so
benign, so pitying, bore on the forehead a crown of thorns! Even while
the blood coursed in Dalroy's veins with the awe of it, he knew that he
was looking at the figure of Christ on the Cross. This, then, was the
calvary spoken of by Joos, and invisible in the earlier murk. The beams
of the risen moon etched the painted carving in most realistic lights
and shadows. The pallid skin glistened as though in agony. The big,
piercing eyes gazed down at the passing soldiers as the Man of Sorrows
might have looked at the heedless legionaries of Rome.

The travelled