He
was not a soldier, merely a civilian serving as a soldier, but he had
learned already to interpret many of the signs of combat. There was an
atmospheric feeling that registered on a sensitive mind the difference
between victory and defeat, and he was firm in the belief that as
yesterday had gone today was going. Certainly this great German army
which he believed to be in the center was not advancing, and something
of a character most menacing was happening to the wings of the German
force. He read it in the serious, preoccupied faces of the officers who
passed near. There was not a smile on the face of the youngest of them
all, but deepest anxiety was written alike on young and old.
John and Fleury sat together at the edge of the brook, and for a while
forgot their chagrin at not being on the battle line. The battle itself
which they could not see, but which they could hear, absorbed them so
thoroughly that they had no time to think of regrets.
John had thought that man's violence, his energy in destruction on the
first day could not be equalled, but it seemed to him now that the
second day surpassed the first. The cannon fire was distant, yet the
waves of air beat heavily upon them, and the earth shook without
ceasing. Wisps of smoke floated toward them and the air was tainted
again with the acrid smell of burned gunpowder.
"You're a mountaineer, Fleury, you told me," said Scott, "and you should
be able to judge how sound travels through gorges.
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