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.

But the crisp clear blue of the cold morning was wonderfully suitable to the hosts of the air and they were at work. Along a battle front of five hundred miles in the west and of seven or eight hundred in the east messages were flashing, on wires by telephone and telegraph and then on nothing but the pulsating air.

John, who had been compelled to deal so much with these invisible agencies felt them now about him. He had a highly sensitive mind like a photographic plate that registered everything, and when he opened the window that he might see better and admit the fresh air, he did not have to reach out for knowledge. It came, and registered itself upon that delicate and imaginative mind. He had thought so much and he had striven so hard to see and to divine what lay before him that he felt almost able to send messages of his own through the air, messages of hope winging their way directly to Julie.

The mind of man is a strange thing. It may be a godlike instrument, the powers of which are yet but little known. John did not believe in the least in anything supernatural, but he did believe in the immense and unfathomed power of the natural. Alone, and in the early dawn with silence all about him it seemed that he heard Julie calling to him. Her voice traveled like the wireless on the pulsating air. She needed him and she turned to him alone for aid. She had divined in some manner that only he could help her and he would come, no matter what the risk. The cry was registered again and again upon his sensitive soul, and always he sent back the answer that he was coming. His mind, like hers, had become a wireless, and both were working.

He became unconscious of time and place. He no longer saw the blue sky, but he stretched out his arms and called:

"I am coming!"

"Coming? What do you mean by coming? Who is it you\'re telling?"

John came out of his dream, or the misty region between here and nowhere, and turned to Jacques, who in the process of awakening at that moment had heard his words which were spoken in French.

"I was just talking to the air," replied John a little uncertainly. "Fine mornings appeal to me, and I was telling this one that I\'d soon come out into it"

Jacques continued to awaken. He was a big man who worked hard and who slept heavily. Rousing from sleep was a task accomplished by degrees and it took some time. He had heard John with one ear and now he heard with the other. His right eye opened slowly and then the left. The blood became more active in his brain and in a minute or two he was awake all over.

"Telling the morning air that you\'re coming out into it, eh Castel?" he said as he put one foot on the floor. "You\'re a poet, I see. You don\'t look it, but being French, as you Lorrainers are, it makes you fond of poetry."

"I do believe you have it right, Jacques," said John, "but if I can get my breakfast now I mean to go upon the road at once."

"Oh, you can get it, Castel. The whole kitchen has fallen in love with you. I found that out last night after you had gone away. That little Annette told me so."

"It was to tease you," said John, who understood at once and who was willing to fib in a good cause. "I saw her watching through a window a fine big fellow, exactly your size, age and appearance, and with the same name. I said something about his being a hulking hostler and she turned upon me like a hawk."

"Now, did she?" exclaimed Jacques, a great smile spreading slowly across his face.

"She did. Told me it was a poor return for their kindness to criticize a better man."

"Ah, that Annette is bright and quick. She can see through a man at one look. Castel, I like you, and I hope you\'ll get to Metz without trouble. But keep a civil and a slow tongue in your mouth. Don\'t speak until the Germans speak to you, and then tell the truth without stammering. I\'ll go to the kitchen with you, as my work begins early."

John knew that he had a friend, and the two left the stable together. But he was not thinking much then of the Gratz farm or of anybody upon it. He had sent his soul on before, and he meant that his body should catch up with it.

Johanna, Annette and the master, Gratz himself, were in the kitchen. He ate a good breakfast with Jacques, paid Gratz for food and lodging, and putting his blankets and knapsack upon his back, took once more to the road. Jacques repeated his good advice to be polite to men to whom it paid to be polite, and Annette, standing by the side of the stalwart hostler, waved him farewell.

The slush, frozen the night before, had not yet melted, and John walked rapidly along the broad firm highway, elated and bold. Julie had called to him. He would not reason with himself, and ask how or why it had been done, but he felt it. He liked to believe that wireless signals had passed between them. Anyway he was going to believe it, and hence his heart was light and his spirit strong.

He passed sentinels posted along the road, but his passport was always sufficient, and his pleasant manner bred a pleasant manner in return. Soon there was nothing but a line of smoke to mark where the Gratz farm stood, but he carried with him good memories of it. He hoped that the romance of Jacques and Annette would end happily. In truth he was quite sure that it would, and he began to whistle softly to himself, a trick that he had caught from General Vaugirard.

John had no certainty that he would enter Metz, which must now be less of a city than a great fortress with a powerful garrison. But he felt sure that he could at least penetrate to the outskirts and there find more trace of Auersperg. A prince and man of his social importance could scarcely pass through the city without being noticed, and there would be gossip among the soldiers. Fortunately he had been in Metz twice and he knew the romantic old city at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille, dominated by its magnificent Gothic cathedral. After all he might overtake Auersperg there and in some manner achieve his task. Chance took a wide range in so great a war and nothing was impossible.

He was now approaching the line between France and Germany, and Metz lay only eleven miles beyond. The beauty of the clear cold day endured. There was snow on the hills, but the brilliant sun touched it with a luminous golden haze, and the crisp air was the breath of life.

He swung along at a great gait for one who walked. Life for months without a roof had been hard, but it had toughened wonderfully those whom it did not kill, and John with a magnificent constitution was one of those who had profited most. He felt no weariness now although he had come many miles.

About one o\'clock in the afternoon he sat on a stone by the roadside and ate with the appetite of vigorous youth good food from his knapsack. While he was there a German sergeant, with about twenty men in wagons going toward Metz, stopped and spoke to him.

"Hey, you on the stone, what are you doing?" asked the sergeant.

John cut off a fresh piece of sausage with his clasp knife and answered briefly and truthfully:

"Eating."

The sergeant had a broad, red and merry face, and facing a man of good humor he was not offended.

"So I see," he said, "but that wasn\'t what I meant."

John, without another word, took out his passport, handed it to him and went on eating. The sergeant examined it, handed it back to him and said:

"Correct."

"I show it to everybody," said John. "When a man speaks to me I don\'t care who he is, or what he is, I hand it to him. I, Jean Castel, as you see by the name on the passport, don\'t want trouble with anybody."

"And a wise fellow you are, Castel. I\'m Otto Scheller, a sergeant in the service of his Imperial Majesty and the Fatherland."

"You look as if you had seen much of war, Sergeant Scheller, but I am a dealer in horses and I am happiest where the bullets are fewest."

"It\'s an honest confession, but it does not bespeak a high heart."

"Perhaps not, but sometimes a horse-dealer is more useful than a soldier. For instance, the off horse of the front wagon has picked up a stone in his left hind foot, and if it\'s not taken out he\'ll go lame long before you reach Metz."

"Donnerwetter! But it\'s true. You do know something about horses and you have an eye in your head. Here you, Heinrich, take that stone out, quick, or it won\'t be good for you!"

"And the right horse of the third wagon has glanders. The swelling is just beginning to show below the jaw. It\'s contagious, you know. You\'d better turn him loose, or all your horses will die."

"Donner und blitzen! See Fritz, if it\'s true. It\'s so, is it? Then release the poor animal as Castel says, and put in one of the extras. See, you Castel, you\'re a wizard, you hardly glanced at the horses, and you saw what we didn\'t see, although we\'ve been with them all day."

"I\'ve grown up with horses. It\'s my business to know everything about them, and maybe your trade before the war didn\'t bring you near them."

Scheller threw back his great head and laughed.

"If a horse had approached where I worked," he said, "much good beer would have been spilt. I was the head waiter in a restaurant on the Unter den Linden. Ah, the happy days! Oh, the glorious street! and here it\'s nothing but march, march, and shoot, shoot! Three of my best waiters have been killed already. And the other lads are no horsemen either. That big Fritz over there made toys, Joseph drove a taxicab, August was conductor on a train to Charlottenberg, and Eitel was porter in a hotel. We\'re all from Berlin, and will you tell us, Castel, how soon we can take Paris and London and go back to the Unter den Linden?"

John shook his head.

"There are about fifteen hundred million people in the world who are asking that question, Otto Scheller," he replied, "and out of all the fifteen hundred millions not one can answer it. But I will ask you a question in return."

"What is it?"

"Will you give me a ride in one of your wagons to Metz?"

"Why, certainly," replied Scheller. "Your passport is in good order, and we can take you to the first line of fortifications. There you\'ll meet high officers and you\'ll have to make more statements, because Metz, as you know, is one of the most powerful fortresses in Europe."

"I know; why shouldn\'t I, a Lorrainer, know? But my passport will take me in. Meanwhile, I thank you, Otto Scheller, for the kindness you\'re showing me."

"All right, jump in, and off we go."

It was a provision wagon, drawn by stout Percherons, which John felt sure had been bred in France, and which he also felt sure had never been paid for by German money. The wagon was empty now, evidently having delivered its burden nearer the battle lines, and John found a comfortable seat beside the sergeant, while a stout Pickelhaube drove.

"Looks like peace, Castel," said the sergeant, waving his hand at the landscape, "but things are not always what they seem."

"How so?"

"See the hills across there. The French hold part of them, and often the artillery goes boom! boom! They threaten an attack on Metz. We shall hear the cannon before long."

John looked long at the hills, high, white and silent, but presently they began to groan and mutter as Scheller had predicted they would. Flashes of flame appeared and giant shells were emptied like gusts of lava from a volcano. One burst in the road about three hundred yards in front of them, and tore a hole so deep that they were compelled to drive around it.

"The French are good with the guns," said Scheller, regarding the excavation meditatively, "but of course it was by mere chance that the shell struck in the road."

John felt a light and momentary chill. It would certainly be the irony of fate if on his great quest he were smitten down by a missile from his own army. But no others struck near them, although the intermittent b............