Weissenberg, four miles away.

Frederick's force, with that of Keith, amounted to twenty-eight
thousand men, and Retzow's command was too far away to be
considered as available. Daun's force, lying within a mile of
Hochkirch, amounted to ninety thousand men. Well might Keith say
that the Austrians deserved to be hanged, if they did not attack.
Frederick himself was somewhat uneasy, and would have moved away on
the Friday night, had he not been waiting for the arrival of a
convoy of provisions from Bautzen. Still, he relied upon Daun's
inactivity.

This time, however, his reliance was falsified. All Daun's generals
were of opinion that it would be disgraceful, were they to stand on
the defensive against an army practically less than a third of
their force; and their expostulations at length roused Daun into
activity. Once decided, his dispositions were, as usual, excellent.

[Map: Battle of Hochkirch]

His plan was an able one. He himself, with thirty thousand men, was
to start as soon as it was dark on Friday evening, sweep round to
the south, follow the base of the Devil's Mountain, and then
through the hollows and thick wood till he was close to the force
on the right of Hochkirch; and was to fall suddenly on them, at
five o'clock on Saturday morning. The orders were that, as soon as
Hochkirch was taken, the rest of the army, sixty thousand strong,
were to march against Frederick, both in front and on his left, and
so completely smash and crumple him up.

Frederick had no premonition of the storm that was gathering. On
Thursday and Friday the Austrians were engaged, as usual, in
felling trees, forming abattis, throwing up earthworks, and in all
ways strengthening their position. Everything seemed to show that
Daun was still bent upon standing upon the defensive only.

As the lurking Croats and Pandoors had, every night, crept up
through the brushwood and hollows, and skirmished with the Prussian
outposts away on the right, scattered firing was not heeded much in
Hochkirch. Fergus had just got up, in the little room he shared
with Lindsay in the marshal's quarters, a mile north of Hochkirch;
and was putting on his boots when, a few minutes past five, the
sound of firing was heard.

"There are the Croats, as usual," he said.

"What a restless fellow you are, Drummond! You have been up, at
this unearthly hour, each morning since we got here. It won't be
light for another two hours yet. I doubt whether it