“First sign of hostility!” said the cavalry lieutenant, turning round in his saddle and laughing boyishly. The troopers behind him grinned under their steel hats and then looked stem again, glancing sideways into the glades of those silent fir-woods.
“It would be easy to snipe us from those woods,” said Harding. “Too damned easy!”
“And quite senseless,” said Brand. “What good would it do them?”
Harding was prepared to answer the question. He had been thinking it out.
“The Hun never did have any sense. He’s not likely to get it now. Nothing will ever change him. He is a bad, treacherous, evil swine. We must be prepared for the worst, and if it comes——”
“What?” asked Brand.
Harding had a grim look, and his mouth was hard.
“We must act without mercy, as they did in Louvain.”
“Wholesale murder, you mean?” said Brand harshly.
“A free hand for machine-guns,” said Harding, “if they ask for it.”