up. His squadron was stationed far to the east and south of Roisel; and there was at that time nothing in the military situation to give him greater concern for that particular sector. Yet when news arrived he scanned it quickly for report of operations about Roisel. However, though he twice got leave of a day, he did not on either occasion penetrate farther into Picardy than the little city where Lady Agnes now lived.
All along the front, from Switzerland to the sea, the calm continued; but few on either side of that line held illusions as to the nature of that calm. Then, as all the world knows, suddenly upon a morning the storm broke.
Gerry Hull received the bulletins which came over the military wire which brought him also his orders. These orders were for his squadron at once to move and report for service at the earliest possible moment at a certain point in Picardy—which orders, as orders usually go, were unexplained except as the news bulletins gave them meaning
The news, however, left no loopholes for doubt. The great German assault, which had begun the morning before, already had developed a complete break-through of the British front. The Germans, in one tremendous dash, had overrun the first lines of defense, the second, and the third; they were advancing now in open country with only remnants of an army before them; and the center of this huge wave of the enemy advance was what had been the French village of Roisel.
