THE FOREST OF SWORDS

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. IN PARIS 1
II. THE MESSAGE 30
III. IN THE FRENCH CAMP 53
IV. THE INVISIBLE HAND 76
V. SEEN FROM ABOVE 99
VI. IN HOSTILE HANDS 121
VII. THE TWO PRINCES 146
VIII. THE SPORT OF KINGS 167
IX. THE PUZZLING SIGNAL 186
X. OLD FRIENDS 209
XI. THE CONTINUING BATTLE 231
XII. JULIE LANNES 247
XIII. THE MIDDLE AGES 268
XIV. A PROMISE KEPT 291
XV. THE RESCUE 311

THE FOREST OF SWORDS

CHAPTER I

IN PARIS

John Scott and Philip Lannes walked together down a great boulevard of
Paris. The young American's heart was filled with grief and anger. The
Frenchman felt the same grief, but mingled with it was a fierce, burning
passion, so deep and bitter that it took a much stronger word than anger
to describe it.

Both had heard that morning the mutter of cannon on the horizon, and
they knew the German conquerors were advancing. They were always
advancing. Nothing had stopped them. The metal and masonry of the
defenses at Liège had crumbled before their huge guns like china
breaking under stone. The giant shells had scooped out the forts at
Maubeuge, Maubeuge the untakable, as if they had been mere eggshells,
and the mighty Teutonic host came on, almost without a check.

John had read of the German march on Paris, nearly a half-century
before, how everything had been made complete by the genius of Bismarck
and von Moltke, how the ready had sprung upon and crushed the unready,
but the present swoop of the imperial eagle seemed far more vast and
terrible than the earlier rush could have been.

A month and the legions were already before the City of Light. Men with
glasses could see from the top of the Eiffel Tower the gray ranks that
were to hem in devoted Paris once more, and the government had fled
already to Bordeaux. It seemed that everything was lost before the war
was fairly begun. The coming of the English army, far too small in
numbers, had availed nothing. It had been swept up with the others,
escaping from capture or destruction only by a hair, and was now driven
back with the French on the capital.

John had witnessed two battles, and in neither had the Germans stopped
long. Disregarding their own losses they drove forward, immense,
overwhelming, triumphant. He felt yet their very physical weight,
pressing upon him, crushing him, giving him no time to breathe. The
German war machine was magnificent, invincible, and for the fourth time
in a century the Germans, the exulting Kaiser at their head, might enter
Paris.

The Emperor himself might be nothing, mere sound and glitter, but back
of him was the greatest army that ever trod the planet, taught for half
a century to believe in the divine right of kings, and assured now that
might and right were the same.

THE FOREST OF SWORDS