hing of them."

Then before Arthur could answer, something happened. The air trembled,
and a dull sound, echoing again and again, came to them. The two
scouts stared at one another; then they turned, together, to look at
the Uhlan, and saw that he had heard it, too, and was listening
sharply. The light was full on his face, and they could see that it
wore an awed expression. And well it might! They had heard the sound
of the first heavy gun that was fired in anger in the war of the
nations!

"That gun was some distance away. I should think it might have been
fired at Fleron," said Paul. "The siege must have begun."

And now the air was full of sound. First from one side, then from the
other, batteries and forts joined in the chorus. All around them, it
seemed, the great voices of the guns were speaking. Soon individual
explosions ceased to stand out; everything was merged into a heavy,
dull roar that beat against their ears and filled the air with a
continuous tremor. Sometimes the roar rose in volume when a new
battery came into action. For a few minutes Paul and Arthur were
absorbed. They listened, spellbound, to the roar of the guns. There
was something unreal about it. It did not seem possible that those
guns were being fired to kill and destroy, for, as they looked out,
everything was peaceful still. Save when their eyes fell upon the
Uhlan, mounted on his horse. He sat in his saddle, stiff, erect, the
very type of the vast army of which he was a tiny, undistinguishable
part--as a rule. Now he was that army, for the two who watched him.
Still they stared while the shadows advanced, eating into the light
spaces that remained, until grey dusk settled over everything, and he
seemed to slip into it, and become a part of the landscape. Then his
horse moved; he turned, and cantered slowly out of sight.

His going somehow seemed to break a spell.

"Come! We must see what's going on back there," said Paul. "We can
see the battery, you know, if those crosses really mean that a battery
was to be located on the spot we had placed from the map."

They went to the other side of the little garage and looked out. And,
to the east, on a piece of rising ground, that would have been hidden
had the de Frenard house still stood, as it had stood before the fire,
they saw something that looked like a picture of an inferno.

There was a great gash in the woods, where trees had been cut down
ruthlessly. Aga