'I know it,' he answered with gravity, which of itself rebuked me. 'And where is my child?'

I shook my head.

'Yet I do not give up my work and the task God and the times have given me, and go out looking for it!' he answered severely. 'Leaving Scot, and Swede, and Pole, and Switzer to divide my country. For shame! You have your work too, and it lies by your lady's side. See to it that you do it. For the rest I have scouts out, who know the country; if I learn anything through them you shall hear it. And now of another matter. How long has the Waldgrave been like this, my friend?'

'Like this, my lord?' I muttered stupidly.

He nodded. 'Yes, like this,' he repeated. 'I have heard him called a brave man. Coming of his stock, he should be; and when I saw him in Tzerclas' camp he had the air of one. Now he starts at a shadow, is in a trance half his time, and a tremor the other half. What ails him?'

I told him how he had been wounded, fighting bravely, and that since that he had not been himself.

Count Hugo rubbed his chin gravely. 'It is a pity,' he said. 'We want all--every German arm and every German head. We want you. Man alive!' he continued, roused to anger, I suppose, by my dull face, 'do you know what is in front of you?'

'No, my lord,' I said in apathy.

He opened his mouth as if to hurl a volley of words at me. But he thought better of it and shut his lips tight. 'Very well,' he said grimly. 'Wait three days and you will see.'

But in truth, I had not to wait three days. Before sunset of the next I began to see, and, downcast as I was, to prick up my ears in wonder. Beyond Romhild and between that town and Bamberg, the great road which runs through the valley of the Pegnitz, was such a sight as I had never seen. For many miles together a column of dust marked its course, and under this went on endless marching. We were but a link in a long chain, dragging slowly southwards. Now it was a herd of oxen that passed along, moving tediously and painfully, driven by half-naked cattle-men and guarded by a troop of grimy horse. Now it was a reinforcement of foot from Fulda, rank upon rank of shambling men trailing long pikes, and footsore, and parched as they were, getting over the ground in a wonderful fashion. After them would come a long string of waggons, bearing corn, and hay, and malt, and wines; all lurching slowly forward, slowly southward; often delayed, for every quarter of a mile a horse fell or an axle broke, yet getting forward.