It continued to be fascinating work to watch the stirring events that were transpiring. That tower on the top of the wrecked country house proved a splendid lookout for the two deeply interested boys. Jack in particular was making it a point to impress all the features of the action upon his memory. Later on at the first available chance he meant to incorporate what he had witnessed in a stirring letter that might thrill the hearts of all those in the home land who read it, even as his own pulses were quickened just then. When the smoke pall chose to lift again after quite an interval, Amos gave a cry of mingled surprise and chagrin. “Why, Jack, see, they’re gone!” “You mean the Highlanders who were behind that stone wall, don’t you, Amos?” “Yes, not a man of them is left. And, Jack, I don’t seem to see any stretched out on the ground. Do you think they had to retreat so soon?” “Hardly that,” the other assured him. “Those Scots are the most stubborn fellows going. They don’t like to give up anything they’ve once had possession of. Of course I couldn’t say for certain, but the chances are they’ve charged out to meet the oncoming Germans face to face.” “And they may be bayoneting each other in that awful fog of smoke further on,” Amos continued. “Oh! it’s terrible, terrible! I never thought war was so cruel. I always pictured it as glorious, with the heroes coming home to be crowned as victors. I’ll never think of it again as I used to. General Sherman was right when he called it what he did.” So the changes took place rapidly. It was as though they were looking through a kaleidoscope. Every puff of air raised the curtain of smoke in some new section and allowed the absorbed spectators a chance to look upon phases of the battle they had as yet failed to see. To think, that all through that long day, while the rival armies dug new trenches confronting each other, this terrible butchery must continue, was something to chill the heart. “Why,” burst out Amos at length, after they had been a long time in the tower, “you could almost believe the end of the world had come, with all this noise and fire. They say it won’t be a flood next time but fire that is going to destroy everything. For one, Jack, I’m beginning to get enough of this.” “We’ll stay only a little while longer, Amos. Fact is, we’ll never run across such a splendid chance as this to watch a big battle. It is Teuton against Anglo-Saxon now, the first time they’ve been up against each other for centuries really. And this war will tell which is going to be the world leaders.” “If the Kaiser wins we’ll all have to brush up on our German, and that’s what I don’t like much,” Amos complained. “If that was the worst of it there’d be little reason for complaining,” Jack told him. “I suppose German is as fine a language as the next, once you get your tongue adapted to it.”