All the restraint had gone from his voice, and there was a new eagerness in his expression; the older man, at this irrelevant moment, found himself remembering that his General was a boy who had never seen battle before.
Himself a famous soldier, who had been named “a second Mars,” he looked critically at the Prince.
“M. de Soubise has every advantage,” he said.
“But we can keep him at bay till nightfall,” replied William, “when we can gain Utrecht.”
“Do you think so, Highness?”
The Prince turned on him the candid look of youth.
“Yes,” he said simply.
The air about them hung dun and heavy with smoke between the trees. The whizz and thud of bullets striking the trunks, the hoarse, deafening boom of the cannon, the nearer sound of striking tinder, transformed the sweet stillness of the morning into the lurid tumult of war.
“Your Highness is in some danger here,” said M. D’Aylva. “If you would withdraw nearer the mill——”