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The hunting horn sounded, and the dogs barked. He saw hostile warriors in coloured jerkins and with shining weapons, with spear and halbert, pitching their tents and striking them again. The watch-fires flamed up anew, and men sang and slept under the branches of the tree.
John de Witt, the leader of this party, though he had been forced to conclude the Triple Alliance by the previous advance of Lewis to the Rhine, had expressly refused to join England in an attack on France, and still clung blindly to her friendship. His trust only broke down when the glare of the French watch-fires was seen from the walls of Amsterdam.
He is on the Feldwache in the forest of Bondy before Raincy, and his turn comes to go on the uttermost sentry post. As the snow-drift blows to one side he can see the French watch-fires close by him in Bondy; nearer still he sees the three stones and the few spadefuls of earth behind which, as he knows, is the French outpost sentry confronting him.
At length thrice welcome sight! the watch-fires of the German reformers, kindled at their own, began to streak the horizon. They knew that the hour of darkness had passed, and that the time was near when the Church would leave her asylum, and go forth to sow the fields of the world with the immortal seed of truth.
The fire from the enemy's artillery was, however, hotly maintained; and as night fell, some squadrons of the Fourteenth, who were picketed near, were unable to light their watch-fires, being within reach of their shot. As the darkness increased so did the cannonade, and the bright flashes from the walls and the deep booming of the artillery became incessant.
The guard held their bivouac around the quarters of the Emperor; and here, beside the watch-fires, sat the bronzed and scarred veterans who had braved every death and danger, from the Pyramids to the Kremlin.
All the light there was came from the fitful watch-fires, where even the wagons were being burned now that the meagre supply of rough timber was giving out. The rebels, too, were burning everything on which they could lay their hands, and from between the spaced-out glow of their bonfires came ever and again the spurt of cannon-flame. "Speak, Govind Singh!"
Then Beltane brake from Roger's clasp, and ran on beside the river, until, beyond the sullen waters the watch-fires flared before him, in whose red light the mill loomed up rugged and grim, its massy walls scarred and cracked, its great wheel fallen to ruin. Now above the wheel was a gap in the masonry, an opening roughly square that had been a window, mayhap, whence shone a warm, mellow light.
Love-letters, written beside watch-fires and sick-beds, flew to and fro like carrier-doves with wondrous speed; and nowhere in all the brave and busy land was there a fonder pair than this, although their honeymoon was spent apart in camp and hospital, and well they knew that there might never be for them a happy going home together.
From the hundred chimneys of the village, Like the Afreet in the Arabian story, Smoky columns Tower aloft into the air of amber. At the window winks the flickering fire-light; Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer, Social watch-fires, Answering one another through the darkness.
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