At last, about eight o'clock, the sun shone over the top of the hill and the fog, like a kind of impenetrable gauze, began to draw away in front of us. One by one the trees reappeared, only the tops of the loftiest remaining shrouded in the mist. Nothing stirred. The road, black yesterday with men and horses now appeared absolutely white between the meadows damp with dew and vividly green under the first rays of the morning sun. Lying flat on our chests in the grass in front of our guns, on a sort of natural terrace between the stones descending the slope, we scanned the plain. After a time everything seemed to move, and one had to make an effort to dispel the illusion. The men are saying that we may have to stay here two days. Surely that cannot be possible? Somebody asserted that he had heard the instructions given to the Major by a General: "You'll stay there," said he, "as long as the position is tenable. I rely on your instinct as an artilleryman." Another man supported the first speaker. "Yes, that's right. He said, 'Solente, I rely on your instinct as an artilleryman.' Why, I heard him myself." We also heard that last Saturday's engagement would be known as the Battle of Ethe. "No," said another. "It will be called the Battle of Virton." "Ethe, Virton!... What the devil does it matter what it's called. Seeing that we've had to retreat!..." "Oh, yes, but all the same," said the trumpeter, "we ought to know. Suppose you get back to your people and they ask you what engagements you've been in. You'll answer, 'I've been fighting in Belgium.' 'Yes,' they'll say, 'but Belgium is a big place--bigger than our commune! Were you at Liége, or Brussels, or Copenhagen?' You would look a silly fool!" The other shrugged his shoulders. With the help of a bayonet we opened a box of bully-beef for the four of us, and fell to. The only sound was that made by the hatchet of one of the men who was chopping down a small birch-tree which might conceivably interfere with the fire of his gun. The silence was too intense, the immobility of the countryside too complete. The enemy was there. We neither heard him nor saw him, but that only rendered him the more sinister. The unwonted calm, when we had braced ourselves up for battle, was terrifying, and our nerves became overstrained. I supposed that the retreat of the 4th Army Corps had by this time been accomplished. Time passed, and the French army was still falling back, while the enemy advanced cautiously, threading his way through the woods. Suddenly, about two o'clock, a machine-gun began to crackle quite close by in the forest. A horseman galloped through the clearing and drew rein beside the Major. We at once limbered up.