quick to see a clew in
anything unusual. He jumped down into the crater and not only found his
pains rewarded, but that the wire was intact and ran underground in
either direction. Who had laid it? Not the Grays. Why was it there? He
called for one of his men to bring a buzzer, and it was the work of
little more than a minute to cut the wire and make an attachment. Then
he heard a woman's voice talking to "Lanny." Who was Lanny? He waited
till he had heard enough to know that it was none other than Lanstron,
the chief of staff of the Browns, and the woman must be a spy. An
orderly despatched to the chief of intelligence with the news returned
with the order:

"Drop everything and report to me in person at once."

"For this I have made my sacrifice!" Marta thought. "The killing goes on
by Lanny's orders, not by Westerling's, this time."

Leaving her mother to enjoy the prospect, a slow-moving figure,
trance-like, she went along the first terrace path to a point near the
veranda where the whole sweep of landscape with its panorama of retreat
magnetized her senses. Like the gray of lava, the Gray soldiery was
erupting from the range; in columns, still under the control of
officers, keeping to the defiles; in swarms and batches, under the
control of nothing but their own emotions. Mostly they were hugging
cover, from instinct if not from direction, but some relied on straight
lines of flight and speed of foot for escape. Coursing aeroplanes were
playing a new part. Their wireless was informing the Brown gunners where
the masses were thickest. This way and that the Brown artillery fire
drove retreating bodies, prodding them in the back with the fearful
shepherdry of their shells. Officers' swords flashed in the faces of the
bolters or in holding rear-guards to their work. Officers and orderlies
were galloping hither and thither with messages, in want of wires.
Commanders had been told to hold, but how and where to hold? They saw
neighboring regiments and brigades going and they had to go. The
machine, the complicated modern war machine, was broken; the machine,
with its nerves of intelligence cut, became a thing of disconnected
parts, each part working out its own salvation. Authority ceased to be
that of the bureau and army lists. It was that of units racked by
hardship, acting on the hour's demand.

Gorged was the pass road, overflowing with the struggling tumult of men
and vehicles. Self-preservation breaking the bon