"The butt may be brutal," commented the senior Captain, clearing his throat and expectorating copiously; "but all the same it is a hellishly useful thing!"
"Why leave your enemy brains when he may live to plan your defeat by the use of them?" agreed the Adjutant. The scabbard of his sword clinked, as he moved, against the boulder, and the sound made an eavesdropper go goose-fleshy all over, as he lay prone among dry bents and bracken in the blackness on the farther side. Then he heard the Captain ask:
"Did the Crown Prince continue the advance to-day?" and strained his ears for the Staff officer's reply.
"Undoubtedly! Moltke's telegram from the King's Headquarters at Mainz ran: 'Seek out and fight the enemy wherever you may find him,' and Marshal MacMahon is said to be concentrating all his force on a high plateau between Froeschwiller and Eberbach, west of the Sauer and the Sulz. The bridges have been broken—his position is an exceptionally strong one.... Of course you know the kind of ground!"
"Open ground," snorted the Captain, "over which an assailant must pass to get at him. Sapperlot! don't I wish I'd had the chance to-day!"
"You are too greedy, Scheren," joked the Adjutant. "Ts't! What was that?"
Both men were silent, intently listening. For the eavesdropper, titillated to madness by a spear of seed-grass that had thrust up a nostril, had given a smothered sneeze. Now on the point of discovery, he found presence of mind sufficient to repeat the sneeze, panting doggishly, whining and scratching among the fern....
The ruse was successful. The Adjutant said, laughingly:
"It's a dog, nosing at a rat or rabbit-hole. Under-Lieutenant Brand's terrier 'Nagler,' perhaps."
"Hie, then, boy!"