an infantry band was playing;
away among the wet hills to the left the strumming vibrations of wet
drums marked the arrival of a regiment from goodness knows where; and
presently we saw them, their gray overcoats and red trousers soaked
almost black with rain, rifles en bandouliere, trudging patiently up
the muddy slope above the town. Something in the plodding steps of
those wet little soldiers touched me. Bravely their soaked drums
battered away, bravely they dragged their clumsy feet after them,
brightly and gayly the breaking sun touched their crimson forage-caps
and bayonets and the swords of mounted officers; but to me they were
only a pathetic troop of perplexed peasants, dragged out of the bosom
of France to be huddled and herded in a strange pasture, where death
watched them from the forest yonder, marking them for slaughter with
near-sighted Teutonic eyes.

A column of white cloud suddenly capped the rocks on the vineyard
above. Bang! and something came whistling with a curious, bird-like
cry over the village of Morsbronn, flying far out across the valley:
and among the pines of the Prussian forest a point of flame flashed, a
distant explosion echoed.

Down in the street below us an old man came tottering from his little
shop, peering sideways up into the sky.

"Il pleut, berger," called out the operator beside me, in a bantering
voice.

"It will rain--bullets," said the old man, simply, and returned to
his shop to drag out a chair on the doorsill and sit and listen to the
shots which our cavalry outposts were exchanging with the Prussian
scouts.

"Poor old chap," said the operator; "it will be hard for him. He was
with the Grand Emperor at Jena."

"You speak as though our army was already on the run," I said.

"Yes," he replied, indifferently, "we'll soon be on the run."

After a moment I said: "I'm going to ride to La Trappe. I wish you
would send those messages to Paris."

"All right," he said.

Half an hour later I rode out of Morsbronn, clad in the uniform of the
Third Hussars, a disguise supposed to convey the idea to those at La
Trappe that the army and not the police were responsible for their
expulsion.

The warm August sunshine slanted in my face as I galloped away up the
vineyard road and out on to the long plateau where, on every hillock,
a hussar picket sat his wiry horse, carbine poised, gazing steadily
toward the east.

Over the sombre Prussian forests mist hung; away to the no