"Saarbrück ... Spicheren ... Frossard ... Colonel von Pestel...."
"Something up...." Towers adjusted his eyeglass. Brotherton, catching a sentence shouted by an officer of a jäger battalion to another green-coat leaning from a window on the second-floor, jumped as though he had been prodded with a bayonet, and turned a flaming face upon his friend:
"A telegram has come in... There has been serious fighting at Saarbrück. Did they lie to us at the station, then? Officers and gentlemen——"
"Softly, Chris!" The Doctor's hand upon his arm checked him on the verge of a fiery outburst. "I fancy they've a right to hold back intelligence dispatched from Headquarters when the senders mark the wire 'Delay.'"
"No doubt, but I had better interview the Commandant. Details would be worth having!" said Brotherton, adding with a peculiar smile, "Or at least I, in my inexperience, am inclined to think so."
Came the quick answer:
"You can have details now—without troubling the Commandant! Full—well, as fully as I got them—under a strict undertaking of secrecy for four hours—at six o'clock this morning!"
Brotherton turned as ashen-pale as he had hitherto been crimson. Towers called out gleefully, as active little thrills of excitement coursed down P. C. Breagh's spine:
"Bravo, Doctor! And you had it up youi sleeve all the time. 'Unfold, thou man of 'orrid mystery!' as Miss Le Grange says at Astley's in the Specter's Bride."
"There's not so much to unfold. But from, eight thousand to ten thousand French troops made an attack on Saarbrück yesterday. Some battalions of the 8th Prussian Army Corps had augmented the original garrison, and their nearest support was at Lebach, five miles to the rear. A mitrailleuse-battery and some field-guns posted on the Keppertsberg drove the Blue Uniforms out of the town!"