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 head.

“I know nothing of it,” he said.

“But doubtless your friend Lannes does.  What a wonderful thing it is to carry through the heavens the dispatches which may move forward a million armed men.”

“I don’t know anything about Lannes’ dispatches.”

“Nor do I, but I can make a close guess, just as you can.  He’s surely hovering over the battle field today, and as I said last night he certainly has some idea where you are, and sooner or later will come for you.”

John looked up, but again the heavens were bare and clear.  Then he looked down and saw walking near them a heavy, middle-aged, bearded man to whom all the German officers paid great deference.  The man’s manner was haughty and overbearing, and John understood at once that in the monarchical sense he was a personage.

“Do you know the big fellow there?” he said to Weber.  “Have you heard anyone speak of him?”

“I saw him this morning, and one of the guards told us who he is.  That is Prince Karl of Auersperg.  The house of Auersperg is one of the oldest in Germany, much older than the Emperor’s family, the Hohenzollerns.  I don’t suppose the world contains any royal blood more ancient than that of Prince Karl.”