Well, Jacques was a good fellow and a friend of France, the nation that
was fighting for its existence, and if he wanted to do it he might snore
until he raised the roof!
John sat up. He saw the pink on the eastern hills turning to blue and
then spreading to the higher skies. The day was going to be clear and
cold. He walked to the window and looked up at the skies, seeking for
aeroplanes, after the habit that had now grown upon him. But the sky was
speckless and no sounds came from the Gratz farmhouse. Doubtless the
German officers quartered there were sleeping late, knowing that they
had no need to hurry to the front, since the fighting in the hills and
mountains was desultory.
But the crisp clear blue of the cold morning was wonderfully suitable to
the hosts of the air and they were at work. Along a battle front of five
hundred miles in the west and of seven or eight hundred in the east
messages were flashing, on wires by telephone and telegraph and then on
nothing but the pulsating air.
John, who had been compelled to deal so much with these invisible
agencies felt them now about him. He had a highly sensitive mind like a
photographic plate that registered everything, and when he opened the
window that he might see better and admit the fresh air, he did not have
to reach out for knowledge.
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