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when he had gone to Châlons in the early days to appeal to Fortin-Lescluze; but at that time the dread significance of the machinery of war had passed almost unnoticed in his preoccupation about his boy. Now he realized that for a year that machinery had been the setting of his boy's life; for months past such sights and sounds as these had formed the whole of George's world; and Campton's eyes took in every detail with an agonized avidity.

"What's that?" he exclaimed.

A huge continuous roar, seeming to fall from the low clouds above them, silenced the puny rumble and clatter of the road. On and on it went, in a slow pulsating rhythm, like the boom of waves driven by a gale on some far-distant coast.

"That? The guns———" said Mr. Brant.

"At the front?"

"Oh, sometimes they seem much nearer. Depends on the wind."

Campton sat bewildered. Had he ever before heard that sinister roar? At Châlons? He could not be sure. But the sound had assuredly not been the same; now it overwhelmed him like the crash of the sea over a drowning head. He cowered back in his corner. Would it ever stop, he asked himself? Or was it always like this, day and night, in the hell of hells that they were bound for? Was that merciless thud forever in the ears of the dying?