nd. Why do they
leave us here, almost neglected, and why do their officers walk about,
looking so doubtful and anxious? I've heard that the Germans were
approaching Paris with five armies. It may be that we've cut off at
least one of those armies and that it's in mortal danger."

"It may be so. But have you thought, Fleury, of the extraordinary
difference between this morning and yesterday morning?"

"I have. In conditions they're worlds apart. Hark! Listen now, Scott, my
friend!"

He lay on the grass and put his ear to the ground, just as John had
often done. Listening intently for at least two minutes, he announced
with conviction that the cannonade was moving eastward.

"Which means that the Germans are withdrawing again?" said John.

"Undoubtedly," said Fleury, his face glowing.

They listened a quarter of an hour longer, and John himself was then
able to tell that the battle line was shifting. The Germans elsewhere
must have fallen back several miles, but the army about him did not yet
move. He caught a glimpse of the burly general walking back and forth in
the forest, his hands clasped behind him, and a frown on his broad,
fighting face. He would walk occasionally to a little telephone station,
improvised under the trees--John could see the wires stretching away
through the forest--and listen long and attentively. But when he put
down the receiver the same moody look was invariably on his face, and
John was convinced as much by his expression as by the sound of the guns
that affairs were not going well with the Germans.

Another long hour passed and the sun moved on toward noon, but a German
army of perhaps a quarter of a million men lay idle in the forest of
Senouart, as John now called the whole region.

Presently the general walked down the line and John lost sight of him.
But Weber reappeared, coming from the other side of the hillock, and
John was glad to see him, since Fleury had gone back to attend to a
wounded friend.

"There doesn't seem to be as much action here as I expected," said
Weber, cheerfully, sitting down on the grass beside young Scott.

"But they're shaking the world there! and there!" said John, nodding to
right and to left.

"So they are. This is a most extraordinary reversal, Mr. Scott, and I
can't conceive how it was brought about. Some mysterious mind has made
and carried through a plan that was superbly Napoleonic. I'd give much
to know how it was done."

John shook his he