To-morrow it was utterly gone.
Still without being halted or delayed we went briskly on.

We had topped the next rise commanding the next valley, and--except for a few stragglers and some skirmishers--the Belgians were quite out of sight, when our driver stopped with an abruptness which piled his four passengers in a heap and pointed off to the northwest, a queer, startled, frightened look on his broad Flemish face.

There was smoke there along the horizon--much smoke, both white and dark; and, even as the throb of the motor died away to a purr, the sound of big guns came to us in a faint rumbling, borne from a long way off by the breeze.
It was the first time any one of us, except McCutcheon, had ever heard a gun fired in battle; and it was the first intimation to any of us that the Germans were so near.

Barring only venturesome mounted scouts we had supposed the German columns were many kilometers away.

A brush between skirmishers was the best we had counted on seeing.
Right here we parted from our taxi driver.