“I know not.  I’m a simple buyer and seller of horses.  I’m a much better judge of a horse than of an army.  I’ve no idea which side is the stronger.  I don’t love war, and I’m going away from it as fast as I can.”

Jacques laughed.

“Perhaps it will follow you,” he said.  “There is war everywhere now, or soon will be.  I hear that it’s spreading all over the world.”

John shrugged his shoulders, and followed Jacques up a ladder into a loft over the horses.  But it was not a bad room.  It had two small iron beds and it was secure from wet and cold.

“You take that,” said Jacques, pointing to the bed on the right.  “It belonged to Fritz who was the hostler here with me.  He went to the army at the first call and was killed at Longwy.  Fritz was a German, a Saxon, but he and I were friends.  We had worked together here three years.  I’d have been glad if the bullets had spared him.  The horses miss him, too.  He had a kind hand with them and they liked him.  Poor Fritz!  You sleep in the bed of a good man.”

“My eyes are so heavy that I think I’ll go to bed now.”

“The bed is waiting for you.  It’s always welcome to one who has walked all day in the cold as you have.  I have more work.  I have the tasks of that poor Fritz and my own to do now.  It may be an hour, two hours before I’m through, but if you sleep as soundly as I do I’ll not wake you up.”

John sank into deep slumber almost at once and knew nothing until the next morning.

CHAPTER VIII

INTO GERMANY

A frosty dawn was just beginning to show through the single window that lighted up the little room.  It opened toward the east, where the light was pink over the hills, but the upper sky was yet in dusk.  John sat up in bed and rubbed the last sleep out of his eyes.  A steady moaning sound made him think he was hearing again the thunder of great guns, as he had heard it days and nights at the Battle of the Marne.

The low ominous mutter came from a point toward the north, and glancing that way, although he knew his eyes would meet a blank wall, he saw that it was only Jacques, snoring, not an ordinary common snore, but the loud resounding trumpet call that can only come from a mighty chest and a powerful throat through an eagle beak.  Jacques was stretched flat upon his back and John knew that he must have worked extremely hard the night before to roar with so much energy through his nose while he slept.  Well, Jacques was a good fellow and a friend of France, the nation that was fighting for its existence, and if he wanted to do it he might snore until he raised the roof!

John sat up.  He saw the pink on the eastern hills turning to blue and then spreading to the higher skies.  The day was going to be clear and cold.  He walked to the window and looked up at the skies, seeking for aeroplanes, after the habit that had now grown upon him.  But the sky was speckless and no sounds came from the Gratz farmhouse.  Doubtless the German officers quartered there were sleeping late, knowing that they had no need to hurry to the front, since the fighting in the hills and mountains was desultory.