CHAPTER VII.
BARRICADES AND BAYONETS The city of Edmonton was in an uproar, its streets thronged with excited men, ranchers and cowboys from the ranches, lumberjacks from the foothill camps, men from the mines, trappers with lean, hard faces, in weird garb, from the north.
The news from the front was ominous.

Belgium was a smoking waste.

Her skies were black with the burning of her towns, villages and homesteads, her soil red with the blood of her old men, her women and children.

The French armies, driven back in rout from the Belgian frontier, were being pounded to death by the German hordes.

Fortresses hitherto considered impregnable were tumbling like ninepins before the terrible smashing of Austrian and German sixteen-inch guns.