apen moon.

After a silence Jack relighted his half-burned cigar.

"Then it is invasion?" he asked.

"Yes--invasion."

"When?"

"Now."

"Good heavens! the very stones in the fields will rise up!"

"If the people did so too it might be to better purpose,"
observed Grahame, dryly. Then he emptied his glass, flicked the
ashes from his cigar, and, sitting erect in his chair, said,
"See here, Marche, you and I are accustomed to this sort of
thing, we've seen campaigns and we have learned to judge
dispassionately and, I think, fairly accurately; but, on my
honour, I never before have seen the beginning of such a
tempest--never! You say the very stones will rise up in the
fields of France. You are right. For the fields will be ploughed
with solid shot, and the shells will sow the earth with iron from
the Rhine to the Loire. Good Lord, do these people know what is
coming over the frontier?"

"Prussians," said Jack.

"Yes, Prussians and a few others--Wuertembergers, Saxons,
Bavarians, men from Baden, from Hesse, from the Schwarzwald--from
Hamburg to the Tyrol they are coming in three armies. I saw the
Spicheren, I saw Wissembourg--I have seen and I know."

Presently he opened a fresh bottle, and, with that whimsical
smile and frank simplicity that won whom he chose to win, leaned
towards Jack and began speaking as though the younger man were
his peer in experience and age:

"Shall I tell you what I saw across the Rhine? I saw the machinery
at work--the little wheels and cogs turning and grinding and
setting in motion that stupendous machine that Gneisenau patented
and Von Moltke improved--the great Mobilization Machine! How this
machine does its work it is not easy to realize unless one has
actually watched its operation. I saw it--and what I saw left me
divided between admiration and--well, damn it all!--sadness.

"You know, Marche, that there are three strata of fighting men in
Germany--the regular army, the 'reserve,' and the Landwehr. It
is a mistake into which many fall to believe that the reserve is
the rear of the regular army. The war strength of a regiment is
just double its peace strength, and the increment is the reserve.
The blending of the two in time of war is complete; the medalled
men of 1866 and of the Holstein campaign, called up from the
reserve, are welded into the same ranks with the young soldiers
who are serving their first period of three years. It is an utter
mistake to think of the Pr