Croquier was silent.
"I'm not sure," said Horace, after racking his brain, "but I think the woman whose boy was killed, said that Saxons had done it."
"Saxons, h'm! Well, that's a slight clew. I hope you're wrong, because the Saxons are about the best troops in the German Army, pretty clean fighters, too, as a rule. I hope you're wrong," he repeated; "we're in a desperate position and we need three days' time."
Little, however, did the officer, with all his special information, suspect the nearness of the impending blow. Even at the time that he was speaking, a detachment of German hussars had crossed the Meuse near Namur, ridden through Charleroi and trotted on towards the Sambre. At first they were mistaken for British hussars, to whose uniform theirs was similar. Soon, however, they were recognized and driven back, with the loss of a few killed and wounded. Simultaneously, an artillery engagement began between the armies of Lanrezac and Von Kluck at the bridges above and below Charleroi.
In the afternoon, that part of Langle de Cary's army to which Horace and Croquier had irregularly attached themselves moved north. The two fugitives followed, not because they were wanted, but Croquier had been told to stay and Horace, although he had been told to go back with the refugees, had not been served with a point-blank military order. He decided to chance it, not being punishable for disobedience as a soldier. The boy was wild to see a battle, if there should be one, but Croquier forbade his attaching himself to any infantry regiment. He, himself, had made friends with one of the gunners of a "Soixante-Quinze" and the battery was delighted with being chosen as the escort of the "captive Kaiser." The battery-commander took the boy under his protection, feeling that this was better than setting him adrift and took on himself the responsibility of seeing that the lad should be sent on to Paris that night.
"But I won't see the fight, back here with the artillery," persisted Horace.
A gunner looked round at him with his mouth twisted on one side.
"I hope you're right, my boy," he said. "I'm thinking we'll see too much of it."
"I don't want to see a lot of battles," reiterated the lad, "I just want to see one!"