"Oh," he exclaimed, very red. "I thought it was the thing to say."

She smiled, continuing to shell the peas, then, with her sensitive and slightly flushed face still lowered, she looked at him out of her dark blue eyes.

"Sometimes," she said, "young men say 'tres chic.' It depend on when and how one says it."

"Are there times when it is all right for me to say it?" he inquired.

"Yes, I think so.... How are your mules today?"

"The same," he said, "—ready to bite or kick or eat their heads off. The Remount took two hundred this morning."

"I saw them pass," said the girl. "I thought perhaps you also might be departing."

"Without coming to say good-bye—to you!" he stammered.

"Oh, conventions must be disregarded in time of war," she returned carelessly, continuing to shell peas. "I really thought I saw you riding away with the mules."

"That man," said Burley, much hurt, "was a bow-legged driver of the Train-des-Equipages. I don't think he resembles me."

As she made no comment and expressed no contrition for her mistake, he gazed about him at the sunny garden with a depressed expression. However, this changed presently to a bright and hopeful one.

"Vooz ate tray, tray belle, mademoiselle!" he asserted cheerfully.

"Monsieur!" Vexed perhaps as much at her own quick blush as his abrupt eulogy, she bit her lip and looked at him with an ominously level gaze. Then, suddenly, she smiled.

"Monsieur Burley, one does not so express one's self without reason, without apropos, without—without encouragement——"

She blushed again, vividly. Under her wide straw hat her delicate, sensitive face and dark blue eyes were beautiful enough to inspire eulogy in any young man.

"Pardon," he said, confused by her reprimand and her loveliness. "I shall hereafter only think you are pretty, mademoiselle—mais je ne le dirais ploo."

"That would be perhaps more—comme il faut, monsieur."

"Ploo!" he repeated with emphasis. "Ploo jamais! Je vous jure——"

"Merci; it is not perhaps necessary to swear quite so solemnly, monsieur."

She raised her eyes from the pan, moving her small, sun-tanned hand through the heaps of green peas, filling her palm with them and idly letting them run through her slim fingers.

"L'amour," he said with an effort—"how funny it is—isn't it, mademoiselle?"

"I know nothing about it," she replied with decision, and rose with her pan of peas.

"Are you going, mademoiselle?"

"Yes."

"Have I offended you?"

"No."

He trailed after her down the garden path between rows of blue larkspurs and hollyhocks—just at her dainty heels, because the brick walk was too narrow for both of them.

"Ploo," he repeated appealingly.

Over her shoulder she said with disdain:

"It is not a topic for conversation among the young, monsieur—what you call l'amour." And she entered the kitchen, where he had not the effrontery to follow her.

That evening, toward sunset, returning from the corral, he heard, high in the blue sky above him, her bell-music drifting; and involuntarily uncovering, he stood with bared head looking upward while the celestial melody lasted.

And that evening, too, being the fete of Alincourt, a tiny neighbouring village across the river, the bell-mistress went up into the tower after dinner and played for an hour for the little neighbour hamlet across the river Lesse.

All the people who remained in Sainte Lesse and in Alincourt brought out their chairs and their knitting in the calm, fragrant evening air and remained silent, sadly enraptured while the unseen player at her keyboard aloft in the belfry above set her carillon music adrift under the summer stars—golden harmonies that seemed born in the heavens from which they floated; clear, exquisitely sweet miracles of melody filling the world of darkness with magic messages of hope.

Those widowed or childless among her listeners for miles around in the darkness wept quiet tears, less bitter and less hopeless for the divine promise of the sky music which filled the night as subtly as the scent of flowers saturates the dusk.

Burley, listening down by the corral, leaned against a post, one powerful hand across his eyes, his cap clasped in the other, and in his heart the birth of things ineffable.

For an hour the carillon played. Then old Bayard struck ten times. And Burley thought of the trenches and wondered whether the mellow thunder of the great bell was audible out there that night.



CHAPTER XVI

DJACK

There came a day when he did not see Maryette as he left for the corral in the morning.

Her father, very stiff with rheumatism, sat in the sun outside the arched entrance to the inn.

"No," he said, "she is going to be gone all day today. She has set and wound the drum in the belfry so that the carillon shall play every hour while she is absent."

"Where has she gone?" inquired Burley.

"To play the carillon at Nivelle."

"Nivelle!" he exclaimed sharply.

"Oui, monsieur. The Mayor has asked for her. She is to play for an hour to entertain the wounded." He rested his withered cheek on his hand and looked out through the window at the sunshine with aged and tragic eyes. "It is very little to do for our wounded," he added aloud to himself.

Burley had sent twenty mules to Nivelle the night before, and had heard some disquieting rumours concerning that town.

Now he walked out past the dusky, arched passageway into the sunny street and continued northward under the trees to the barracks of the Gendarmerie.

"Bon jour l'ami Gargantua!" exclaimed the fat, jovial brigadier who had just emerged with boots shining, pipe-clay very apparent, and all rosy from a fresh shave.

"Bong joor, mon vieux copain!" replied Burley, preoccupied with some papers he was sorting. "Be good enough to look over my papers."

The brigadier took them and examined them.

"Are they en regle?" demanded Burley.

"Parfaitement, mon ami."

"Will they take me as far as Nivelle?"

"Certainly. But your mules went forward last night with the Remount——"

"I know. I wish to inspect them again before the veterinary sees them. Telephone to the corral for a saddle mule."

The brigadier went inside to telephone and Burley started for the corral at the same time.

His cream-coloured, wall-eyed mule was saddled and waiting when he arrived; he stuffed his papers into the breast of his tunic and climbed into the saddle.

"Allongs!" he exclaimed. "Hoop!"

—————————

Half way to Nivelle, on an overgrown, bushy, circuitous path which was the only road open between Nivelle and Sainte Lesse, he overtook Maryette, driving her donkey and ancient market cart.

"Carillonnette!" he called out joyously. "Maryette! C'est je!"

The girl, astonished, turned her head, and he spurred forward on his wall-eyed mount, evincing cordial symptoms of pleasure in the encounter.

"Wee, wee!" he cried. "Je voolay veneer avec voo!" And ere the girl could protest, he had dismounted, turning the wall-eyed one's nose southward, and had delivered a resounding whack upon the rump of that temperamental animal.

"Allez! Go home! Beat it!" he cried.

The mule lost no time but headed for the distant corral at a canter; and Burley, grinning like a great, splendid, intelligent dog who has just done something to be proud of, stepped into the market cart and seated himself beside Maryette.

"Who told you where I am going?" she asked, scarcely knowing whether to laugh or let loose her indignation.

"Your father, Carillonnette."

"Why did you follow me?"

"I had nothing else to do——"

"Is that the reason?"

"I like to be with you——"

"Really, monsieur! And you think it was not necessary to consult my wishes?"

"Don't you like to be with me?" he asked, so naively that the girl blushed and bit her lip and shook the reins without replying.

They jogged on through the disused byway, the filbert bushes brushing axle and traces; but presently the little donkey relapsed into a walk again, and the girl, who had counted on that procedure when she started from Sainte Lesse, did not urge him.

"Also," she said in a low voice, "I have been wondering who permits you to address me as Carillonnette. Also as Maryette. You have been, heretofore, quite correct in assuming that mademoiselle is the proper form of address."

"I was so glad to see you," he said, so simply that she flushed again and offered no further comment.

For a long while she let him do the talking, which was perfectly agreeable to him. He talked on every subject he could think of, frankly practicing idioms on her, pleased with his own fluency and his progress in French.

After a while she said, looking around at him with a curiosity quite friendly:

"Tell me, Monsieur Burley, why did you desire to come with me today?"

He started to reply, but checked himself, looking into the dark blue and engaging eyes. After a moment the engaging eyes became brilliantly serious.

"Tell me," she repeated. "Is it because there were some rumours last evening concerning Nivelle?"

"Wee!"

"Oh," she nodded, thoughtfully.

After driving for a little while in silence she looked around at him with an expression on her face which altered it exquisitely.

"Thank you, my friend," she murmured.... "And if you wish to call me Carillonnette—do so."

"I do want to. And my name's Jack.... If you don't mind."

Her eyes were fixed on her donkey's ears.

"Djack," she repeated, musingly. "Jacques—Djack—it's the same, isn't it—Djack?"

He turned red and she laughed at him, no longer afraid.

"Listen, my friend," she said, "it is tres beau—what have you done."

"Vooz etes tray belle——"

"Non! Please stop! It is not a question of me——"

"Vooz etes tray chick——"

"Stop, Djack! That is not good manners! No! I was merely saying that—you have done something very nice. Which is quite true. You heard rumours that Nivelle had become unsafe. People whispered last evening—something about the danger of a salient being cut at its base.... I heard the gossip in the street. Was that why you came after me?"

"Wee."

"Thank you, Djack."

She leaned a trifle forward in the cart, her dimpled elbows on her knees, the reins sagging.

Blue and rosy jays flew up before them, fluttering away through the thickets; a bullfinch whistled sweetly from a thorn bush, watching them pass under him, unafraid.

"You see," she said, half to herself, "I had to come. Who could refuse our wounded? There is no bell-master in our department; and only one bell-mistress.... To find anyone else to play the Nivelle carillon one would have to pierce the barbarians' lines and search the ruins of Flanders for a Beiaardier—a Klokkenist, as they call a carillonneur in the low countries.... But the Mayor asked it, and our wounded are waiting. You understand, mon ami Djack, I had to come."

He nodded.

She added, naively:

"God watches over our trenches. We shall be quite safe in Nivelle."

A dull boom shook the sunlit air. Even in the cart they could feel the vibration.

An hour later, everywhere ahead of them, a vast, confused thundering was steadily increasing, deepening with every ominous reverberation.

Where two sandy wood roads crossed, a mounted gendarme halted them and examined their papers.

"My poor child," he said to the girl, shaking his head, "the wounded at Nivelle were taken away during the night. They are fighting there now in the streets."

"In Nivelle streets!" faltered the girl.

"Oui, mademoiselle. Of the carillon little remains. The Boches have been shelling it since daylight. Turn again. And it is better that you turn quickly, because it is not known to us what is going on in that wooded district over there. For if they get a foothold in Nivelle on this drive they might cross this road before evening."

The girl sat grief-stricken and silent in the cart, staring at the woods ahead where the road ran through taller saplings and where, here and there, mature trees towered.

All around them now the increasing thunder rolled and echoed and shook the ground under them. Half a dozen gendarmes came up at a gallop. Their officer drew bridle, seized the donkey's head and turned animal and cart southward.

"Go back," he said briefly, recognizing Burley and returning his salute. "You may have to take your mules out of Sainte Lesse!" he added, as he wheeled his horse. "We are getting into trouble out here, nom de Dieu!"

Maryette's head hung as the donkey jogged along, trotting willingly because his nose was now pointed homeward.

The girl drove with loose and careless rein and in silence; and beside her sat Burley, his troubled gaze always reverting to the despondent form beside him.

"Too bad, little girl," he said. "But another time our wounded shall listen to your carillon."

"Never at Nivelle.... The belfry is being destroyed.... The sweetest carillon in France—the oldest, the most beautiful.... Fifty-six bells, Djack—a wondrous wilderness of bells rising above where one stands in the belfry, tier on tier, tier on tier, until one's gaze is lost amid the heavenly company aloft.... Oh, Djack! And the great bell, Clovis! He hangs there—through hundreds of years he has spoken with his great voice of God!—so that they heard him for miles and miles across the land——"

"Maryette—I am so sorry for you——"

"Oh! Oh! My carillon of Nivelle! My beloved carillon!"

"Maryette, dear! My little Carillonnette——"

"No—my heart is broken——"

"Vooz ates tray, tray belle——"

The sudden crashing of heavy feet in the bushes checked him; but it was too late to heed it now—too late to reach for his holster. For all around them swarmed the men in sea-grey, jerking the donkey off his forelegs, blocking the little wheels with great, dirty fists, seizing Burley from behind and dragging him violently out of the cart.

A near-sighted officer, thin and spare as Death, was talking in a loud, nasal voice and squinting at Burley where he still struggled, red and exasperated, in the clutches of four soldiers:

"Also! That is no uniform known to us or to any nation at war with us. That is not regulation in England—that collar insignia. This is a case of a franc-tireur! Now, then, you there in your costume de fantasie! What have you to say, eh?"

There was a silence; Burley ceased struggling.

"Answer, do you hear? What are you?"

"American."

"Pig-dog!" shouted the gaunt officer. "So you are one of those Yankee muleteers in your uniform, and armed! It is sufficient that you are American. If it had not been for America this war would be ended! But it is not enough, apparently, that you come here with munitions and food, that you insult us at sea, that you lie about us and slander us and send your shells and cartridges to England to slay our people! No! Also you must come to insult us in your clown's uniform and with your pistol—" The man began to choke with fury, unable to continue, except by gesture.

But the jerky gestures were terribly significant: soldiers were already pushing Burley across the road toward a great oak tree; six men fell out and lined up.

"M-my Government—" stammered the young fellow—but was given no opportunity to speak. Very white, the chill sweat standing on his forehead and under his eyes, he stood against the oak, lips compressed, grey eyes watching what was happening to him.

Suddenly he understood it was all over.

"Djack!"

He turned his gaze toward Maryette, where she struggled toward him, held by two soldiers.

"Maryette—Carillonnette—" His voice suddenly became steady, perfectly clear. "Je vous aime, Carillonnette."

"Oh, Djack! Djack!" she cried in terror.

He heard the orders; was aware of the levelled rifles; but his reckless greyish eyes were now fixed on her, and he began to laugh almost mischievously.

"Vooz etes tray belle," he said, "—tray, tray chick——"

"Djack!"

But the clang of the volley precluded any response from him except the half tender, half reckless smile that remained on his youthful face where he lay looking up at the sky with pleasant, sightless eyes, and a sunbeam touching the metal mule on his blood-wet collar.



CHAPTER XVII

FRIENDSHIP

She tried once more to lift the big, warm, flexible body, exerting all her slender strength. It was useless. It was like attempting to lift the earth. The weight of the body frightened her.

Again she sank down among the ferns under the great oak tree; once more she took his blood-smeared head on her lap, smoothing the bright, wet hair; and her tears fell slowly upon his upturned face.

"My friend," she stammered, "—my kind, droll friend.... The first friend I ever had——"

The gun thunder beyond Nivelle had ceased; an intense stillness reigned in the forest; only a leaf moved here and there on the aspens.

A few forest flies whirled about her, but as yet no ominous green flies came—none of those jewelled harbingers of death which appear with horrible promptness and as though by magic from nowhere when anything dies in the open world.

Her donkey, still attached to the little gaily painted market cart, had wandered on up the sandy lane, feeding at random along the fern-bordered thickets which walled in the Nivelle byroad on either side.

Presently her ear caught a slight sound; something stirred somewhere in the woods behind her. After an interval of terrible stillness there came a distant crashing of footsteps among dead leaves and underbrush.

Horror of the Hun still possessed her; the victim of Prussian ferocity still lay across her knees. She dared not take the chance that friendly ears might hear her call for aid—dared not raise her voice in appeal lest she awaken something monstrous, unclean, inconceivable—the unseen thing which she could hear at intervals prowling there among dead leaves in the demi-light of the woods.

Suddenly her heart leaped with fright; a man stepped cautiously out of the woods into the road; another, dressed in leather, with dry blood caked on his face, followed.

The first comer, a French gendarme, had already caught sight of the donkey and market cart; had turned around instinctively to look for their owner. Now he discovered her seated there among the ferns under the oak tree.

"In the name of God," he growled, "what's that child doing there!"

The airman in leather followed him across the road to the oak; the girl looked up at them out of dark, tear-marred eyes that seemed dazed.

"Well, little one!" rumbled the big, red-faced gendarme. "What's your name?—you who sit here all alone at the wood's edge with a dead man across your knees?"

She made an effort to find her voice—to control it.

"I am Maryette Courtray, bell-mistress of Sainte Lesse," she answered, trembling.

"And—this young man?"

"They shot him—the Prussians, monsieur."

"My poor child! Was he your lover, then?"

Her tear-filled eyes widened:

"Oh, no," she said naively; "it is sadder than that. He was my friend."

The big gendarme scratched his chin; then, with an odd glance at the young airman who stood beside him:

"To lose a friend is indeed sadder than to lose a lover. What was your friend's name, little one?"

She pressed her hand to her forehead in an effort to search among her partly paralyzed thoughts:

"Djack.... That is his name.... He was the first real friend I ever had."

The airman said:

"He is one of my countrymen—an American muleteer, Jack Burley—in charge at Sainte Lesse."

At the sound of the young man's name pronounced in English the girl began to cry. The big gendarme bent over and patted her cheek.

"Allons," he growled; "courage! little mistress of the bells! Let us place your friend in your pretty market cart and leave this accursed place, in God's name!"

He straightened up and looked over his shoulder.

"For the Boches are in Nivelle woods," he added, with an oath, "and we ought to be on our way to Sainte Lesse, if we are to arrive there at all. Allons, comrade, take him by the head!"

So the wounded airman bent over and took the body by the shoulders; the gendarme lifted the feet; the little bell-mistress followed, holding to one of the sagging arms, as though fearing that these strangers might take away from her this dead man who had been so much more to her than a mere lover.

When they laid him in the market cart she released his sleeve with a sob. Still crying, she climbed to the seat of the cart and gathered up the reins. Behind her, flat on the floor of the cart, the airman and the gendarme had seated themselves, with the young man's body between them. They were opening his tunic and shirt now and were whispering together, and wiping away blood from the naked shoulders and chest.

"He's still warm, but there's no pulse," whispered the airman. "He's dead enough, I guess, but I'd rather hear a surgeon say so."

The gendarme rose, stepped across to the seat, took the reins gently from the girl.

"Weep peacefully, little one," he said; "it does one good. Tears are the tisane which strengthens the soul."

"Ye-es.... But I am remembering that—that I was not very k-kind to him," she sobbed. "It hurts—here—" She pressed a slim hand over her breast.

"Allons! Friends quarrel. God understands. Thy friend back there—he also understands now."

"Oh, I hope he does!... He spoke to me so tenderly—yet so gaily. He was even laughing at me when they shot him. He was so kind—and droll—" She sobbed anew, clasping her hands and pressing them against her quivering mouth to check her grief.

"Was it an execution, then?" demanded the gendarme in his growling voice.

"They said he must be a franc-tireur to wear such a uniform——"

"Ah, the scoundrels! Ah, the assassins! And so they murdered him there under the tree?"

"Ah, God! Yes! I seem to see him standing there now—his grey, kind eyes—and no thought of fear—just a droll smile—the way he had with me—" whispered the girl, "the way—his way—with me——"

"Child," said the gendarme, pityingly, "it was love!"

But she shook her head, surprised, the tears still running down her tanned cheeks:

"Monsieur, it was more serious than love; it was friendship."



CHAPTER XVIII

THE AVIATOR

Where the Fontanes highroad crosses the byroad to Sainte Lesse they were halted by a dusty column moving rapidly west—four hundred American mules convoyed by gendarmerie and remount troopers.

The sweating riders, passing at a canter, shouted from their saddles to the big gendarme in the market cart that neither Nivelle nor Sainte Lesse were to be defended at present, and that all stragglers were being directed to Fontanes and Le Marronnier. Mules and drivers defiled at a swinging trot, enveloped in torrents of white dust; behind them rode a peloton of the remount, lashing recalcitrant animals forward; and in the rear of these rolled automobile ambulances, red crosses aglow in the rays of the setting sun.

The driver of the last ambulance seemed to be ill; his head lay on the shoulder of a Sister of Charity who had taken the steering wheel.

The gendarme beside Maryette signalled her to stop; then he got out of the market cart and, lifting the body of the American muleteer in his powerful arms, strode across the road. The airman leaped from the market cart and followed him.

Between them they drew out a stretcher, laid the muleteer on it, and shoved it back into the vehicle.

There was a brief consultation, then they both came back to Maryette, who, rigid in her seat and very pale, sat watching the procedure in silence.

The gendarme said:

"I go to Fontanes. There's a dressing station on the road. It appears that your young man's heart hasn't quite stopped yet——"

The girl rose excitedly to her feet, but the gendarme gently forced her back into her seat and laid the reins in her hands. To the airman he growled:

"I did not tell this poor child to hope; I merely informed her that her friend yonder is still breathing. But he's as full of holes as a pepper pot!" He frowned at Maryette: "Allons! My comrade here goes to Sainte Lesse. Drive him there now, in God's name, before the Uhlans come clattering on your heels!"

He turned, strode away to the ambulance once more, climbed in, and placed one big arm around the sick driver's shoulder, drawing the man's head down against his breast.

"Bonne chance!" he called back to the airman, who had now seated himself beside Maryette. "Explain to our little bell-mistress that we're taking her friend to a place where they fool Death every day—where to cheat the grave is a flourishing business! Good-bye! Courage! En route, brave Sister of the World!"

The Sister of Charity turned and smiled at Maryette, made her a friendly gesture, threw in the clutch, and, twisting the steering wheel with both sun-browned hands, guided the machine out onto the road and sped away swiftly after the cloud of receding dust.

"Drive on, mademoiselle," said the airman quietly.

In his accent there was something poignantly familiar to Maryette, and she turned with a start and looked at him out of her dark blue, tear-marred eyes.

"Are you also American?" she asked.

"Gunner observer, American air squadron, mademoiselle."

"An airman?"

"Yes. My machine was shot down in Nivelle woods an hour ago."

After a silence, as they jogged along between the hazel thickets in the warm afternoon sunshine:

"Were you acquainted with my friend?" she asked wistfully.

"With Jack Burley? A little. I knew him in Calais."

The tears welled up into her eyes:

"Could you tell me about him?... He was my first friend.... I did not understand him in the beginning, monsieur. Among children it is different; I had known boys—as one knows them at school. But a man, never—and, indeed, I had not thought I had grown up until—he came—Djack—to live at our inn.... The White Doe at Sainte Lesse, monsieur. My father keeps it."

"I see," nodded the airman gravely.

"Yes—that is the way. He came—my first friend, Djack—with mules from America, monsieur—one thousand mules. And God knows Sainte Lesse had never seen the like! As for me—I thought I was a child still—until—do you understand, monsieur?"

"Yes, Maryette."

"Yes, that is how I found I was grown up. He was a man, not a boy—that is how I found out. So he became my first friend. He was quite droll, and very big and kind—and timid—following me about—oh, it was quite droll for both of us, because at first I was afraid, but pretended not to be."

She smiled, then suddenly her eyes filled with the tragedy again, and she began to whimper softly to herself, with a faint sound like a hovering pigeon.

"Tell me about him," said the airman.

She staunched her tears with the edge of her apron.

"It was that way with us," she managed to say. "I was enchanted and a little frightened—it being my first friendship. He was so big, so droll, so kind.... We were on our way to Nivelle this morning. I was to play the carillon—being mistress of the bells at Sainte Lesse—and there was nobody else to play the bells at Nivelle; and the wounded desired to hear the carillon."

"Yes."

"So Djack came after me—hearing rumours of Prussians in that direction. They were true—oh, God!—and the Prussians caught us there where you found us."

She bowed her supple figure double on the seat, covering her face with her sun-browned hands.

The airman drove on, whistling "La Brabanconne" under his breath, and deep in thought. From time to time he glanced at the curved figure beside him; but he said no more for a long time.

Toward sunset they drove into the Sainte Lesse highway.

He spoke abruptly, dryly:

"Anybody can weep for a friend. But few avenge their dead."

She looked up, bewildered.

They drove under the old Sainte Lesse gate as he spoke. The sunlight lay pink across the walls and tipped the turret of the watch tower with fire.

The town seemed very still; nothing was to be seen on the long main street except here and there a Spahi horseman en vidette, and the clock-tower pigeons circling in their evening flight.

The girl, Maryette, looked dumbly into the fading daylight when the cart stopped before her door. The airman took her gently by the arm, and that awakened her. As though stiffened by fatigue she rose and climbed to the sidewalk. He took her unresisting arm and led her through the tunnelled wall and into the White Doe Inn.

"Get me some supper," he said. "It will take your mind off your troubles."

"Yes."

"Bread, wine, and some meat, if you have any. I'll be back in a few moments."

He left her at the inn door and went out into the street, whistling "La Brabanconne." A cavalryman directed him to the military telephone installed in the house of the notary across the street.

His papers identified him; the operator gave him his connection; they switched him to the headquarters of his air squadron, where he made his report.

"Shot down?" came the sharp exclamation over the wire.

"Yes, sir, about eleven-thirty this morning on the north edge of Nivelle forest."

"The machine?"

"Done for, sir. They have it."

"You?"

"A scratch—nothing. I had to run."

"What else have you to report?"

The airman made his brief report in an unemotional voice. Ending it, he asked permission to volunteer for a special service. And for ten minutes the officer at the other end of the wire listened to a proposition which interested him intensely.

When the airman finished, the officer said:

"Wait till I relay this matter."

For a quarter of an hour the airman waited. Finally the operator half turned on his camp chair and made a gesture for him to resume the receiver.

"If you choose to volunteer for such service," came the message, "it is approved. But understand—you are not ordered on such duty."

"I understand. I volunteer."

"Very well. Munitions go to you immediately by automobile. It is expected that the wind will blow from the west by morning. By morning, also, all reserves will arrive in the west salient. What is to be your signal?"

"The carillon from the Nivelle belfry."

"What tune?"

"'La Brabanconne.' If not that, then the tocsin on the great bell, Clovis."

—————————

In the tiny cafe the crippled innkeeper sat, his aged, wistful eyes watching three leather-clad airmen who had been whispering together around a table in the corner all the afternoon.

They nodded in silence to the new arrival, and he joined them.

Daylight faded in the room; the drum in the Sainte Lesse belfry, set to play before the hour sounded, began to turn aloft; the silvery notes of the carillon seemed to shower down from the sky, filling the twilight world with angelic melody. Then, in resonant beauty, the great bell, Bayard, measured the hour.

The airman who had just arrived went to a sink, washed the caked blood from his face and tied it up with a first-aid bandage. Then he began to pace the cafe, his head bent in thought, his nervous hands clasped behind him.

The room was dusky when he came back to the table where his three comrades still sat consulting in whispers. The old innkeeper had fallen asleep on his chair by the window. There was no light in the room except what came from stars.

"Well," said one of the airmen in a carefully modulated voice, "what are you going to do, Jim?"

"Stay."

"What's the idea?"

The bandaged airman rested both hands on the stained table-top:

"We quit Nivelle tonight, but our reserves are already coming up and we are to retake Nivelle tomorrow. You flew over the town this morning, didn't you?"

All three said yes.

"You took photographs?"

"Certainly."

"Then you know that our trenches pass under the bell-tower?"

"Yes."

"Very well. The wind is north. When the Boches enter our trenches they'll try to gas our salient while the wind holds. But west winds are predicted after sunrise tomorrow. I'm going to get into the Nivelle belfry tonight with a sack of bombs. I'm going to try to explode their gas cylinders if I can. The tocsin is the signal for our people in the salient."

"You're crazy!" remarked one of the airmen.

"No; I'll bluff it out. I'm to have a Boche uniform in a few moments."

"You are crazy! You know what they'll do to you, don't you, Jim?"

The bandaged airman laughed, but in his eyes there was an odd flicker like a tiny flame. He whistled "La Brabanconne" and glanced coolly about the room.

One of the airmen said to another in a whisper:

"There you are. Ever since they got his brother he's been figuring on landing a whole bunch of Huns at one clip. This is going to finish him, this business."

Another said:

"Don't try anything like that, Jim——"

"Sure, I'll try it," interrupted the bandaged airman pleasantly. "When are you fellows going?"

"Now."

"All right. Take my report. Wait a moment——"

"For God's sake, Jim, act sensibly!"

The bandaged airman laughed, fished out from his clothing somewhere a note book and pencil. One of the others turned an electric torch on the table; the bandaged man made a little sketch, wrote a few lines which the others studied.

"You can get that note to headquarters in half an hour, can't you, Ed?"

"Yes."

"All right. I'll wait here for my answer."

"You know what risk you run, Jim?" pleaded the youngest of the airmen.

"Oh, certainly. All right, then. You'd better be on your way."

After they had left the room, the bandaged airman sat beside the table, thinking hard in the darkness.

Presently from somewhere across the dusky river meadow the sudden roar of an airplane engine shattered the silence; then another whirring racket broke out; then another.

He heard presently the loud rattle of his comrades' machines from high above him in the star-set sky; he heard the stertorous breathing of the old innkeeper; he heard again the crystalline bell-notes break out aloft, linger in linked harmonies, die away; he heard Bayard's mellow thunder proclaim the hour once more.

There was a watch on his wrist, but it had been put out of business when his machine fell in Nivelle woods. Glancing at it mechanically he saw the phosphorescent dial glimmer faintly under shattered hands that remained fixed.

An hour later Bayard shook the starlit silence ten times.

As the last stroke boomed majestically through the darkness an automobile came racing into the long, unlighted street of Sainte Lesse and halted, panting, at the door of the White Doe Inn.

The airman went out to the doorstep, saluted the staff captain who leaned forward from the tonneau and turned a flash on him. Then, satisfied, the officer lifted a bundle from the tonneau and handed it to the airman. A letter was pinned to the bundle.

After the airman had read the letter twice, the staff captain leaned a trifle nearer.

"Do you think it can be done?" he demanded bluntly.

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. Here are your munitions, too."

He lifted from the tonneau a bomb-thrower's sack, heavy and full. The airman took it and saluted.

"It means the cross," said the staff captain dryly. And to the engineer chauffeur: "Let loose!"



CHAPTER XIX

HONOUR

For a moment the airman stood watching and listening. The whir of the receding car died away in the night.

Then, carrying his bundle and his bomber's sack, heavy with latent death, he went into the inn and through the cafe, where the sleeping innkeeper sat huddled, and felt his way cautiously to the little dining room.

The wooden shutters had been closed; a candle flared on the table. Maryette sat beside it, her arms extended across the cloth, her head bowed.

He thought she was asleep, but she looked up as his footfall sounded on the bare floor.

She was so pale that he asked her if she felt ill.

"No. I have been thinking of my friend," she replied in a low but steady voice.

"He may live," said the airman. "He was alive when we lifted him."

The girl nodded as though preoccupied—an odd, mysterious little nod, as though assenting to some intimate, inward suggestion of her own mind.

Then she raised her dark blue eyes to the airman, who was still standing beside the table, the sack of bombs hanging from his left shoulder, the bundle under his arm.

"Here is supper," she said, looking around absently at the few dishes. Then she folded her hands on the table's edge and sat silent, as though lost in thought.

He placed the sack carefully on a cane chair beside him, the bundle on the floor, and seated himself opposite her. There was bread, meat, and a bottle of red wine. The girl declined to eat, saying that she had supped.

"Your friend Jack," he said again, after a long silence, "—I have seen worse cases. He may live, mademoiselle."

"That," she said musingly, in her low, even voice, "is now in God's hands." She gave the slightest movement to her shoulders, as though easing them a trifle of that burden. "I have prayed. You saw me weep. That is ended—so much. Now—" and across her eyes shot a blue gleam, "—now I am ready to listen to you! In the cart—out on the road there—you said that anybody can weep, but that few dare avenge."

"Yes," he drawled, "I said that."

"Very well, then; tell me how!"

"What do you want to avenge? Your friend?"

"His country's honour, and mine! If he had been slain—otherwise—I should have perhaps mourned him, confident in the law of France. But—I have seen the Rhenish swine on French soil—I saw the Boches do this thing in France. It is not merely my friend I desire to avenge; it is the triple crime against his life, against the honour of his country and of mine." She had not raised her voice; had not stirred in her chair.

The airman, who had stopped eating, sat with fork in hand, listening, regarding her intently.

"Yes," he said, resuming his meal, "I understand quite well what you mean. Some such philosophy sent my elder brother and me over here from New York—the wild hogs trampling through Belgium—the ferocious herds from the Rhine defacing, defiling, rending, obliterating all that civilized man has reverenced for centuries.... That's the idea—the world-wide menace of these unclean hordes—and the murderous filth of them!... They got my brother."

He shrugged, realizing that his face had flushed with the heat of inner fires.

"Coolness does it," he added, almost apologetically, "—method and coolness. The world must keep its head clear: yellow fever and smallpox have been nearly stamped out; the Hun can be eliminated—with intelligence and clear thinking.... And I'm only an American airman who has been shot down like a winged heron whose comrades have lingered a little to comfort him and have gone on.... Yes, but a winged heron can still stab, little mistress of the bells.... And every blow counts.... Listen attentively—for Jack's sake ... and for the sake of France. For I am going to explain to you how you can strike—if you want to."

"I am listening," said Maryette serenely.

"We may not live through it. Even my orders do not send me to do this thing; they merely permit it. Are you contented to go with me?"

She nodded, the shadow of a smile on her lips.

"Very well. You play the carillon?"

"Yes."

"You can play 'La Brabanconne'?"

"Yes."

"On the bells?"

"Yes."

He rose, went around the table, carrying his chair with him, and seated himself beside her. She inclined her pale, pretty head; he placed his lips close to her ear, speaking very slowly and distinctly, explaining his plan in every minute detail.

While he was still speaking in a whisper, the street outside filled with the trample of arriving cavalry. The Spahis were leaving the environs of Sainte Lesse; chasseurs a cheval followed from still farther afield, escorting ambulances from the Nivelle hospitals now being abandoned.

"The trenches at Nivelle are being emptied," said the airman.

"And do you mean that you and I are to go there, to Nivelle?" she asked.

"That is exactly what I mean. In an hour I shall be in the Nivelle belfry. Will you be there with me?"

"Yes."

"Excellent!" he exclaimed. "You can play 'La Brabanconne' on the bells while I blow hell out of them in the redoubt below us!"

The infantry from the Nivelle trenches began to pass. There were a few wagons, a battery of seventy-fives, a soup kitchen or two and a long column of mules from Fontanes.

Two American muleteers knocked at the inn door and came stamping into the hallway, asking for a loaf and a bottle of red wine. Maryette rose from the table to find provisions; the airman got up also, saying in English:

"Where do you come from, boys?"

"From Fontanes corral," they replied, surprised to hear their own tongue spoken.

"Do you know Jack Burley, one of your people?"

"Sure. He's just been winged bad."

"The Huns done him up something fierce," added the other.

"Very bad?"

Maryette came back with a loaf and two bottles.

"I seen him at Fontanes," replied the muleteer, taking the provisions from the girl. "He's all shot to pieces, but they say he'll pull through."

The airman turned to Maryette:

"Jack will get well," he translated bluntly.

The girl, who had just refused the money offered by the American muleteer, turned sharply, became deadly white for a second, then her face flamed with a hot and splendid colour.

One of the muleteers said:

"Is this here his girl?"

"Yes," nodded the airman.

The muleteer became voluble, patting Maryette on one arm and then on the other:

"J'ai vue Jack Burley, mamzelle, toot a l'heure! Il est bien, savvy voo! Il est tray, tray bien! Bocoo de trou! N'importe! Il va tray bien! Savvy voo? Jack Burley, l'ami de voo! Comprenny? On va le guerir toot sweet! Wee! Wee! Wee!——"

The girl flung her arms around the amazed muleteer's neck and kissed him impetuously on both cheeks. The muleteer blushed and his comrade fidgeted. Only the girl remained unembarrassed.

Half laughing, half crying, terribly excited, and very lovely to look upon, she caught both muleteers by their sleeves and poured out a torrent of questions. With the airman's aid she extracted what information they had to offer; and they went their way, flustered, still blushing, clasping bread and bottles to their agitated breasts.

The airman looked her keenly in the eyes as she came back from the door, still intensely excited, adorably transfigured. She opened her lips to speak—the happy exclamation on her lips, already half uttered, died there.

"Well?" inquired the airman quietly.

Dumb, still breathing rapidly, she returned his gaze in silence.

"Now that your friend Jack is going to live—what next?" asked the airman pleasantly.

For a full minute she continued to stare at him without a word.

"No need to avenge him now," added the airman, watching her.

"No." She turned, gazed vaguely into space. After a moment she said, as though to herself: "But his country's honour—and mine? That reckoning still remains! Is it not true?"

The airman said, with a trace of pity in his voice, for the girl seemed very young:

"You need not go with me to Nivelle just because you promised."

"Oh," she said simply, "I must go, of course—it being a question of our country's honour."

"I do not ask it. Nor would Jack, your friend. Nor would your own country ask it of you, Maryette Courtray."

She replied serenely:

"But I ask it—of myself. Do you understand, monsieur?"

"Perfectly." He glanced mechanically at his useless wrist watch, then inquired the time. She went to her room, returned, wearing a little jacket and carrying a pair of big, wooden gloves.

"It is after eleven o'clock," she said. "I brought my jacket because it is cold in all belfries. It will be cold in Nivelle, up there in the tower under Clovis."

"You really mean to go with me?"

She did not even trouble to reply to the question. So he picked up his packet and his sack of bombs, and they went out, side by side, under the tunnelled wall.

Infantry from Nivelle trenches were still plodding along the dark street under the trees; dull gleams came from their helmets and bayonets in the obscure light of the stars.

The girl stood watching them for a few moments, then her hand sought the airman's arm:

"If there is to be a battle in the street here, my father cannot remain."

The airman nodded, went out into the street and spoke to a passing officer. He, in turn, signalled the driver of a motor omnibus to halt.

The little bell-mistress entered the tavern, followed by two soldiers. In a few moments they came out bearing, chair-fashion between them, the crippled innkeeper.

The old man was much alarmed, but his daughter followed beside him to the omnibus, in which were several lamed soldiers.

"Et toi?" he quavered as they lifted him in. "What of thee, Maryette?"

"I follow," she called out cheerily. "I rejoin thee—" the bus moved on—"God knows when or where!" she added under her breath.

The airman was whispering to a fat staff officer when she rejoined him. All three looked up in silence at the belfry of Sainte Lesse, looming above them, a monstrous shadow athwart the stars. A moment later an automobile, arriving from the south, drew up in front of the inn.

"Bonne chance," said the fat officer abruptly; he turned and waddled swiftly away in the darkness. They saw him mount his horse. His legs stuck out sideways.

"Now," whispered the airman, with a nod to the chauffeur.

The little bell-mistress entered the car, her wooden gloves tucked under one arm. The airman followed with his packet and his sack of bombs. The chauffeur started his engine.

The middle of the road was free to him; the edges were occupied by the retreating infantry. As the car started, very slowly, cautiously feeling its way out of Sainte Lesse, the fat staff officer turned his horse and trotted up alongside. The car stopped, the engine still running.

"It's understood?" asked the officer in a low voice. "It's to be when we hear 'La Brabanconne'?"

"When you hear 'La Brabanconne.'"

"Understood," said the staff officer crisply, saluted and drew bridle. And the car moved out into the starlit night along an endless column of retreating soldiers, who were laughing, smoking, and chatting as though not in the least depressed by their withdrawal from the dry and cosy trenches of Nivelle which they were abandoning.



CHAPTER XX

"LA BRABANCONNE"

No shells were falling in Nivelle as they left the car on the outskirts of the town and entered the long main street. That was all of Nivelle, a long, treeless main street from which branched a few alleys.

Smouldering debris of what had been houses illuminated the street. There were no other lights. Nothing stirred except a gaunt cat flitting like a shadow along the gutter. There was not a sound save the faint stirring of the cinders over which pale flames played fitfully.

Abandoned trenches ditched the little town in every direction; temporary shelters made of boughs, sheds, and broken-down wagons stood along the street. Otherwise, all impedimenta, materials, and stores had apparently been removed by the retreating columns. There was little wreckage except the burning debris of the few shell-struck houses—a few rags, a few piles of firewood, a bundle of straw and hay here and there.

High, mounting toward the stars, the ancient tower with its gilded hippogriff dominated the place—a vast, vague shape brooding over the single mile-long street and grimy alleys branching from it.

Nobody guarded the portal; the ancient doors stood wide open; pitch darkness reigned within.

"Do you know the way?" whispered the airman.

"Yes. Take hold of my hand."

He dared not use his flash. Carrying bundle and bombsack under one arm, he sought for her hand and encountered it. Cool, slim fingers closed over his.

After a few moments' stealthy advance, she whispered:

"Here are the stairs. Be careful; they twist."

She started upward, feeling with her feet for every stone step. The ascent appeared to be interminable; the narrowing stone spiral seemed to have no end. Her hand grew warm within his own.

But at last they felt a fresh wind blowing and caught a glimpse of stars above them.

Then, tier on tier, the bells of the carillon, fixed to their great beams, appeared above them—a shadowy, bewildering wilderness of bells, rising, rank above rank, until they vanished in the darkness overhead. Beside them, almost touching them, loomed the great bell Clovis, a gigantic mass bulking enormously in that shadowy place.

A sonorous wind flowed through the open tower, eddying among the bells—a strong, keen night wind blowing from the north.

The airman walked to the south parapet and looked down. Below him in the starlight, like an indistinct map spread out, lay the Nivelle redoubt and the trench with its gabions, its sand bags, its timbers, its dugouts.

Very far away to the southeast they could see the glare of rockets and exploding shells, but the sound of the bombardment did not reach them. North, a single searchlight played and switched across the clouds; west, all was dark.

"They'll arrive just before dawn," said the airman, placing his sack of bombs on the pavement under the parapet. "Come, little bell-mistress, take me to see your keyboard."

"It is below—a few steps. This way—if you will follow me——"

She turned to the stone stairs again, descended a dozen steps, opened a door on a narrow landing.

And there, in the starlight, he saw the keyboard and the bewildering maze of wires running up and branching like a huge web toward the tiers of bells above.

He looked at the keyboard curiously. The little mistress of the bells displayed the two wooden gloves with which she encased her hands when she played the carillon.

"It would be impossible for one to play unless one's hands are armoured," she explained.

"It is almost a lost art," he mused aloud, "—this playing the carillon—this wonderful bell-music of the middle ages. There are few great bell-masters in this day."

"Few," she said dreamily.

"And"—he turned and stared at her—"few mistresses of the bells, I imagine."

"I think I am the only one in France or in Flanders.... And there are few carillons left. The Huns are battering them down. Towers of the ancient ages are falling everywhere in Flanders and in France under their shell fire. Very soon there will be no more of the old carillons left; no more bell-music in the world." She sighed heavily. "It is a pity."

She seated herself at the keyboard.

"Dare I play?" she asked, looking up over her shoulder.

"No; it would only mean a shell from the Huns."

She nodded, laid the wooden gloves beside her and let her delicate hands wander over the mute keys.

Leaning beside her the airman quietly explained the plan they were to follow.

"With dawn they will come creeping into Nivelle—the Huns," he said. "I have one of their officers' uniforms in that bundle above. I shall try to pass as a general officer. You see, I speak German. My education was partly ruined in Germany. So I'll get on very well, I expect.

"And directly under us is the trench and the main redoubt. They'll occupy that first thing. They'll swarm there—the whole trench will be crawling with them. They'll install their gas cylinders at once, this wind being their wind.

"But with sunrise the wind changes—and whether it changes or not, I don't care," he added. "I've got them at last where I want them."

The girl looked up at him. He smiled that terrifying smile of his:

"With the explosion of my first bomb among their gas cylinders you are to start these bells above us. Are you afraid?"

"No."

"You are to play 'La Brabanconne.' That is the signal to our trenches."

"I have often played it," she said coolly.

"Not in the teeth of a barbarian army. Not in the faces of a murderous soldiery."

The girl sat quite still for a few moments; then looking up at him, and very pale in the starlight:

"Do you think they will tear me to pieces, monsieur?"

He said:

"I mean to hold those stairs with my sack of bombs until our people enter the trenches. If they can do it in an hour we will be all right."

"Yes."

"It is only a half-hour affair from our salient. I allow our people an hour."

"Yes."

"But if, even now, you had rather go back——"

"No!"

"There is no disgrace in going back."

"You said once, 'anybody can weep for friend and country. Few avenge either.' I am—happy—to be among the few."

He nodded. After a moment he said:

"I'll bet you something. My country is all right, but it's sick. It's got a nauseous dose of verbiage to spew up—something it's swallowed—something about being too proud to fight.... My brother and I couldn't stand it, so we came to France.... He was in the photo air service. He was in mufti—and about two miles up, I believe. Six Huns went for him.... And winged him. He had to land behind their lines.... In mufti.... Well—I've never found courage to hear the details. I can't stand them—yet."

"Your brother—is dead, monsieur?" she asked timidly.

"Oh, yes. With—circumstances. Well, then—after that, from an ordinary, commonplace man I became a machine for the extermination of vermin. That's all I am—an animated magazine of Persian powder—or I do it in any handy way. It's not a sporting proposition, you see, just get rid of them any old way. You don't understand, do you?"

"A—little."

"But it's slow work—slow work," he muttered vaguely, "—and the world is crawling—crawling with them. But if God guides my bomb this time and if I hit one of their gas cylinders—that ought to be worth while."

In the starlight his features became tense and terrible; she shivered in her threadbare jacket.

After a few moments' silence he went away up the steps to put on his German uniform. When he descended again she had a troubled question for him to answer:

"But how shall you account for me, a French girl, monsieur, if they come to the belfry?"

A heavy flush darkened his face:

"Little mistress of the bells, I shall pretend to be what the Huns are. Do you know how they treat French women?"

"I have heard," she said faintly.

"Then if they come and find you here as my—prisoner—they will think they understand."

The colour flamed in her face and she bowed it, resting her elbows on the keyboard.

"Come," he said, "don't be distressed. Does it matter what a Hun thinks? Come; let's be cheerful. Can you hum for me 'La Brabanconne'?"

She did not reply.

"Well, never mind," he said. "But it's a grand battle anthem.... We Americans have one.... It's out of fashion. And after all, I had rather hear 'La Brabanconne' when the time comes.... What a terrible admission! But what Americans have done to my country is far more terrible. The nation's sick—sick!... I prefer 'La Brabanconne' for the time being."

—————————

The Prussians entered Nivelle a little before dawn. The airman had been watching the street below. Down there in the slight glow from the cinders of what once had been a cottage a cat had been squatting, staring at the bed of coals, as though she were once more installed upon the family hearthstone.

Then something unseen as yet by the airman attracted the animal's attention. Alert, crouching, she stared down the vista of dark, deserted houses, then turned and fled like a ghost.

For a long while the airman perceived nothing. Suddenly close to the house facades on either side of the street, shadowy forms came gliding forward.

They passed the glowing embers and went on toward Sainte-Lesse; jaegers, with knapsacks on back and rifles trailing; and on their heads oddly shaped pot helmets with battered looking visors.

One or two motorcyclists followed, whizzing through the desolate street and into the country beyond.

After a few minutes, out of the throat of the darkness emerged a solid column of infantry. In a moment, beneath the bell tower, the ground was swarming with Huns; every inch of the earth became infested with them; fields, hedges, alleys crawled alive with Germans. They overran every road, every street, every inch of open country; their wagons choked the main thoroughfare, they were already establishing themselves in the redoubt below, in the trench, running in and out of dugouts and all over scarp, counter-scarp, parades and parapet, ant-like in energy, busy with machine gun, trench mortar, installing telephones, searchlights, periscopes, machine guns.

Automobiles arrived—two armoured cars and grey passenger machines in which there were officers.

The airman laid his hand on Maryette's arm.

"Little bell-mistress," he said, "German officers are coming into the tower. I want them to find you in my arms when they come up into this belfry. Understand me, and forgive me."

"I—understand," she whispered.

"Play your part bravely. Will you?"

"Yes."

He put his arms around her; they stood rigid, listening.

"Now!" he whispered, and drew her close, kissing her.

Spurred boots clattered on the stone floor:

"Herr Je!" exclaimed an astonished voice. Somebody laughed. But the airman coolly pushed the girl aside, and as the faint grey light of dawn fell on his field uniform bearing the ribbon of the iron cross, two pairs of spurred heels hastily clinked together and two hands flew to the oddly shaped helmet visors.

"Also!" exclaimed the airman in a mincing Berlin accent. "When I require a corps of observers I usually send my aide. That being now quite perfectly understood, you gentlemen will give yourselves the trouble to descend as you have come. Further, you will place a sentry at the tower door, and inform enquirers that General Count von Gierdorff and his staff are occupying the Nivelle belfry for purposes of observation."

The astounded officers saluted steadily; and if they imagined that the mythical staff of this general officer was clustered aloft somewhere up there where the bells hung it was impossible to tell by the strained expressions on their wooden countenances.

However, it was evidently perfectly plain to them what the high Excellenz was about in this vaulted room where wires led aloft to an unseen carillon on the landing in the belfry above.

The airman nodded; they went. And when their clattering steps echoed far below on the spiral stone stairs, the airman motioned to the little bell-mistress. She followed him up the short flight to where the bells hung.

"We're in for it now," he said. "If High Command comes into this place to investigate then I shall have to hold those stairs.... It's growing quite light in the east. Which way is the wind?"

"North," she said in a steady voice. She was terribly pale.

He went to the parapet and looked over, half wondering, perhaps, whether he would receive a rifle shot through the head.

Far below at the foot of the bell-tower the dimly discerned Nivelle redoubt, swarming with men, was being armed; and, to the south, wired he thought, but could not see distinctly.

Then, as the dusk of early dawn grew greyer, the first rifle shots rattled out in the west. The French salient was saluting the wire-stringers.

Back under shelter they tumbled; whistles sounded distantly; a trench mortar crashed; then the accentless tattoo of machine guns broke from every emplacement.

"The east is turning a little yellow," he said calmly. "I believe this matter is going through. Toss some dust into the air. Which way?"

"North," said the girl.

"Good. I think they're placing their cylinders. I think I can see them laying their coils. I'm certain of it. What luck!"

The airman was becoming excited and his voice trembled a little with the effort to control it.

"It's growing pink in the east. Try a handful of dust again," he suggested almost gaily.

"North," she said briefly, watching the dust aloft.

"Luck's with us! Look at the east! If their High Command keeps his nose out of this place!—if he does!—Look at the east, little bell-mistress! It's all gold! There's pink up higher. I can see a faint tinge of blue, too. Can you?"

"I think so."

A minute dragged like a year in prison. Then:

"Try the wind again," he said in a strained voice.

"North."

"Oh, luck! Luck!" he muttered, slinging his sack of bombs over his shoulder. "We've got them! We've certainly got them! What's that! An airplane! Look, little girl—one of our planes is up. There's another! Which way is the wind?"

"North."

"Got 'em!" he snapped between his teeth. "Run over to the stairs. Listen! Is anybody coming up?"

"I can hear nothing."

"Stand there and listen. Never mind the row the guns are making; listen for somebody on the stairs. Look how light it's getting! The sun will push up before many minutes. We've got 'em! Got 'em! Wet your finger and try the wind!"

"North."

"North here, too. What do you know about that! Luck! Luck's with us! And we've got 'em—!" he lifted his clenched hand and laughed at her. "Like that!" he said, his blue eyes blazing. "They're getting ready to gas below. Look at 'em! Glory to God! I can see two cylinders directly under me. They're manning the nozzles! Every man is masking at his post! Anybody on the stairs! Any sound?"

"None."

"Are you certain?"

"It is as still as death below."

"Try the dust. The wind's changing, I think. Quick! Which way?"

"West."

"Oh, glory! Glory to God! They feel it below! They know. The wind has changed. Off came their respirators. No gas this morning, eh? Yes, by God, there will be gas enough for all——!"

He caught up a bomb, leaned over the parapet, held it aloft, poised, aiming steadily for one second of concentrated cooerdination of mind and muscle. Then straight down he launched it. The cylinder beneath him was shattered and a green geyser of gas burst from it deluging the trench.

Already a second bomb followed the first, then another, and then a third; and with the last report another cylinder in the trench below burst into thick green billows of death and flowed over the ground, west.

Two more bombs whirled down, bursting on a machine gun; then the airman turned with a cry of triumph, and at the same instant the sun rose above the hills and flung a golden ray straight across his face.

To Maryette the man stood transfigured, like the Blazing Guardian of the Flaming Sword.

"Ring out your Brabanconne!" he cried. "Let the Huns hear the war song of the land they've trampled! Now! Little bell-mistress, arm your white hands with your wooden gloves and make this old carillon speak in brass and iron!"

He caught her by the arm; they ran down the short flight of steps; she drew on her wooden gloves and sprang to the keyboard.

"I'll hold the stairs!" he cried. "I can hold these stairs for an hour against the whole world in arms. Now, then! The Brabanconne!"

Above the roaring confusion and the explosions far below, from high up in the sky a clear bell note floated as though out of Heaven itself—another, others, crystalline clear, imperious, filling all the sky with their amazing and terrible beauty.

The mistress of the bells struck the keyboard with armoured hands—beautiful, slender, avenging hands; the bells above her crashed out into the battle-song of Flanders, filling sky and earth with its splendid defiance of the Hun.

The airman, bomb in hand, stood at the head of the stone stairs; the ancient tower rocked with the fiercely magnificent anthem of revolt—the war cry of a devastated land—the land that died to save the world—the martyr, Belgium, still prone in the deathly trance awaiting her certain resurrection.

The rising sun struck the tower where three score ancient bells poured from metal throats their heavenly summons to battle!

The Hun heard it, tumbling, clawing, strangling below in the hellish vapours of his own death-fog; and now, from the rear his sky-guns hurled shrapnel at the carillon in the belfry of Nivelle.

Clouds possessed the tower—soft, white, fleecy clouds rolling, unfolding, floating about the ancient buttresses and gargoyles. An iron hail rained on slate and parapet and resounding bell-metal. But the bells pealed and pealed in clear-voiced beauty, and Clovis, the great iron giant, hung, scarcely sonorous under the shrapnel rain.

Suddenly there were bayonets on the stairs—the clatter of heavy feet—alien faces on the threshold. Then a bomb flew, and the terrible crash cleared the stairs.

Twice more the clatter came with the clank of bayonets and guttural cries; but both died out in the infernal roar of the grenades exploding inside that stony spiral. And no more bayonets flickered on the stairs.

The airman, frozen to a statue, listened. Again and again he thought he could hear bugles, but the roar from below blotted out the distant call.

"Little bell-mistress!"

She turned her head, her hands still striking the keyboard. He spoke through the confusion of the place:

"Sound the tocsin!"

Then Clovis thundered from the belfry like a great gun fired, booming out over the world. Around the iron colossus shrapnel swept in gusts; Clovis thundered on, annihilating all sound except his own tremendous voice, heedless of shell and bullet, disdainful of the hell's shambles below, where masked French infantry were already leaping the parapets of Nivelle Redoubt into the squirming masses below.

The airman shouted at her through the tumult:

"They murdered my brother. Did I tell you? They hacked him to slivers with their bayonets. I've settled the reckoning down in the gas there—their own green gas, damn them! You don't understand what I say, do you? He was my brother——"

A frightful explosion blew in the oubliette; the room rattled and clattered with shrapnel.

The airman swayed where he stood in the swirling smoke, lurched up against the stone coping, slid down to his knees.

When his eyes opened the little bell-mistress was bending over him.

"They got me," he gasped. All the front of his tunic was sopping red.

"They said it meant the cross—if I made good.... Are you hurt?"

"Oh, no!" she whispered. "But you——"

"Go on and play!" he whispered with a terrible effort.

"But you——"

"The Brabanconne! Quick!"

She went, whimpering. Standing before the keyboard she pulled on her wooden gloves and struck the keys.

Out over the infernal uproar below pealed the bells; the morning sky rang with the noble summons to all brave men. Once more the ancient tower trembled with the mighty out-crash of the battle hymn.

With the last note she turned and looked down at him where he lay against the wall. He opened his glazing eyes and tried to smile at her.

"Bully," he whispered. "Could you recite—the words—to me—just so I could hear them on my way—West?"

She left the keyboard, came and dropped on her knees beside him; and closing her eyes to check the tears sang in a low, tremulous, girlish voice, De Lonlay's words, to the battle anthem of revolution.

"Bully," he sighed. And spoke no more on earth.

But the little mistress of the bells did not know his soul had passed.

And the French officer who came leaping up the stairs, pistol lifted, halted in astonishment to see a dead man lying beside a sack of bombs and a young girl on her knees beside him, weeping and tremblingly intoning "La Brabanconne."



CHAPTER XXI

THE GARDENER

A week later, toward noon, as usual, the two American, muleteers, Smith and Glenn, sauntered over from their corral to the White Doe Tavern where, it being a meatless day, they ate largely of potato soup and of a tench, smoking hot.

The tench had been caught that morning off the back doorstep, which was an ancient and mossy slab of limestone let into the coping of the river wall.

Jean Courtray, the crippled inn-keeper, caught it. All that morning he had sat there in the sun on the river wall, half dozing, opening his dim eyes at intervals to gaze at his painted quill afloat among the water weeds of the little river Lesse. At intervals, too, he turned his head with that peculiar movement of the old, and peered at his daughter, Maryette, and the Belgian gardener who were working among the potatoes in the garden.

And at last he had hooked his fish and the emaciated young Belgian dropped his hoe and came over and released it from the hook where it lay flopping and quivering and glittering among the wild grasses on the river bank. And that was how Kid Glenn and Sticky Smith, American muleteers on duty at Saint Lesse, came to lunch on freshly caught tench at the Inn of the White Doe.

After luncheon, agreeably satiated, they rose from the table in the little dining room and strolled out to the garden in the rear of the inn, their Mexican spurs clanking. Maryette heard them; they tipped their caps to her; she acknowledged their salute gravely and continued to cultivate her garden with a hoe, the blond, consumptive Belgian trundling a rickety cultivator at her heels.

"Look, Stick," drawled Glenn. "Maryette's got her decoration on."

From where they lounged by the river wall they could see the cross of the Legion pinned to the girl's blouse.

Both muleteers had been present at the investment the day before, when a general officer arrived from Paris and the entire garrison of Sainte Lesse had been paraded—an impressive total of three dozen men—six gendarmes and a brigadier; one remount sub-lieutenant and twenty troopers; a veterinary, two white American muleteers, and five American negro hostlers from Baton Rouge.

The girl had nearly died of shyness during the ceremony, had endured the accolade with crimson cheeks, had stammered a whispered response to the congratulations of neighbors who had gathered to see the little bell-mistress of Sainte Lesse honoured by the country which she had served in the belfry of Nivelle.

—————————

As she came past Smith and Glenn, trailing her hoe, the latter now sufficiently proficient in French, said gaily:

"Have you heard from Jack again, Mamzelle Maryette?"

The girl blushed:

"I hear from Djack by every mail," she said, with all the transparent honesty that characterized her.

Smith grinned:

"Just like that! Well, tell him from me to quit fooling away his time in a hospital and come and get you or somebody is going to steal you."

The girl was very happy; she stood there in the September sunshine leaning on her hoe and gazing half shyly, half humorously down the river where a string of American mules was being watered.

Mellow Ethiopian laughter sounded from the distance as the Baton Rouge negroes exchanged pleasantries in limited French with a couple of gendarmes on the bank above them. And there, in the sunshine of the little garden by the river, war and death seemed very far away. Only at intervals the veering breeze brought to Sainte Lesse the immense vibration of the cannonade; only at intervals the high sky-clatter of an airplane reminded the village that the front was only a little north of Nivelle, and that what had been Nivelle was not so very far away.

—————————

"If you were my girl, Maryette," remarked Smith, "I'd die of worry in that hospital."

"You might have reason to, Monsieur," retorted the girl demurely. "But you see it's Djack who is convalescing, not you."

She had become accustomed to the ceaseless banter of Burley's two comrades—a banter entirely American, and which at first she was unable to understand. But now all things American, including accent and odd, perverted humour, had become very dear to her. The clink-clank of the muleteer's big spurs always set her heart beating; the sight of an arriving convoy from the Channel port thrilled her, and to her the trample of mules, the shouts of foreign negroes, the drawling, broken French spoken by the white muleteers made heavenly real to her the dream which love had so suddenly invaded, and into which, as suddenly, strode Death, clutching at Love.

She had beaten him off—she had—or God had—routed Death, driven him from the dream. For it was a dream to her still, and she thought she could never be able to comprehend the magic reality of it, even when at last her man, "Djack," came back to prove the blessed miracle which held her in the magic of its thrall.

—————————

"Who's the guy with the wheelbarrow?" inquired Sticky Smith, rolling a cigarette.

"Karl, his name is," she answered; "—a Belgian refugee."

"He looks like a Hun to me," remarked Glenn, bluntly.

"He has his papers," said the girl.

Glenn shrugged.

"With his little pink eyes of a pig and his whitish hair and eyebrows—well, maybe they make 'em like that in Belgium."

"Papers," added Smith, "can be swiped."

The girl shook her head:

"He's an invalid student from Ypres. He looks quite ill, I think."

"He looks the lunger, all right. But Huns have it, too. What does he do—wander about town at will?"

"He works for us, monsieur. Your suspicions are harsh. Karl is quite harmless, poor boy."

"What does he do after hours?" demanded Sticky Smith, watching the manoeuvres of the sickly blond youth and the wheelbarrow.

"Monsieur Smith, if you knew how innocent is his pastime!" she exclaimed, laughing. "He collects and studies moths and butterflies. Is there, if you please, a mania more harmless in the world?... And now I must return to my work, messieurs."

As the two muleteers strode clanking away toward the canal in the meadow, the blond youth turned his head and looked after them out of eyes which were naturally pale and small, and which, as he watched the two Americans, seemed to grow paler and smaller yet.

That afternoon old Courtray, swathed in a shawl, sat on the mossy doorstep and fished among the water weeds of the river. The sun was low; work in the garden had ended.

Maryette had gone up into her belfry to play the sunset hymn on the noble old carillon. Through the sunset sky the lovely bell-notes floated far and wide, exquisitely chaste and aloof as the high-showering ecstasy of a skylark.

As always the little village looked upward and listened, pausing in its humble duties as long as their little bell-mistress remained in her tower.

After the hymn she played "Myn hart is vol verlangen" and "Het Lied der Vlamingen," and ended with the delicate, bewitching little folk-song, "Myn Vryer," by Hasselt.

Then in the red glow of the setting sun the girl laid aside her wooden gloves, rose from the ancient keyboard, wound up the drum, and, her duty done for the evening, came down out of the tower among the transparent evening shadows of the tree-lined village street.

The sun hung over Nivelle hills, which had turned to amethyst. Sunbeams laced the little river in a red net through which old Courtray's quill stemmed the ripples. He still clutched his fishing pole, but his eyes were closed, his chin resting on his chest.

Maryette came silently into the garden and looked at her father—looked at the blond Karl seated on the river wall beside the dozing angler. The blond youth had a box on his knees into which he was intently peering.

The girl came to the river wall and seated herself at her father's feet. The Belgian refugee student had already risen to attention, his heels together, but Maryette signed him to be seated again.

"What have you found now, Karl?" she inquired in a cautiously modulated voice.

"Ah, mademoiselle, fancy! I haff by chance with my cultivator among your potatoes already twenty pupae of the magnificent moth, Sphinx Atropos, upturned! See! Regard them, mademoiselle! What lucky chance! What fortune for me, an entomologist, this wonderful sphinx moth to discover encased within its chrysalis!"

The girl smiled at his enthusiasm:

"But, Karl, those funny, smooth brown things which resemble little polished evergreen-cones are not rare in my garden. Often, when spading or hoeing among the potato vines, I uncover them."

"Mademoiselle, the caterpillar which makes this chrysalis feeds by night on the leaves of the potato, and, when ready to transform, burrows into the earth to become a chrysalis or pupa, as we call it. That iss why mademoiselle has often disinterred the pupae of this largest and strangest of our native sphinx-moths."

Maryette leaned over and looked into the wooden box, where lay the chrysalides.

"What kind of moth do they make?" she asked.

He blinked his small, pale eyes:

"The Death's Head," he said, complacently.

The girl recoiled involuntarily:

"Oh!" she exclaimed under her breath, "—that creature!"

For everywhere in France the great moth, with its strange and ominous markings, is perfectly well known. To the superstitious it is a creature of evil omen in its fulvous, black and lead-coloured livery of death. For the broad, furry thorax bears a skull, and the big, mousy body the yellow ribs of a skeleton.

Measuring often more than five inches across the expanded wings, its formidable size alone might be sufficient to inspire alarm, but in addition it possesses a horrid attribute unknown among other moths and butterflies; it can utter a cry—a tiny shrill, shuddering complaint. Small wonder, perhaps, that the peasant holds it in horror—this sleek, furry, powerfully winged creature marked with skull and bones, which whirrs through the night and comes thudding against the window, and shrieks horridly when touched by a human hand.

"So that is what turns into the Death's Head moth," said the girl in a low voice as though to herself. "I never knew it. I thought those things were legless cock-chafers when I dug them out of potato hills. Karl, why do you keep them?"

"Ah, mademoiselle! To study them. To breed from them the moth. The Death's Head is magnificent."

"God made it," admitted the girl with a faint shudder, "but I am afraid I could not love it. When do they hatch out?"

"It is time now. It is not like others of the sphinx family. Incubation requires but a few weeks. These are nearly ready to emerge, mademoiselle."

"Oh. And then what do they do?"

"They mate."

She was silent.

"The males seek the females," he said in his pedantic, monotonous voice. "And so ardent are the lovers that although there be no female moth within five, eight, perhaps ten miles, yet will her lover surely search through the night for her and find her."

Maryette shuddered again in spite of herself. The thought of this creature marked with the emblems of death and possessed of ardour, too, was distasteful.

"Amour macabre—what an unpleasant thought, Karl. I do not care for your Death's Head and for the history of their amours."

She turned and gently laid her head on her father's knees. The young man regarded her with a pallid sneer.

Addressing her back, still holding his boxful of pupae on his bony knees, he said with the sneer quite audible in his voice:

"Your famous savant, Fabre, first inspired me to study the sex habits of the Death's Head."

She made no reply, her cheek resting on her father's knees.

"It was because of his wonderful experiments with the Great Peacock moth and with others of the genus that I have studied to acquaint myself concerning the amours of the Death's Head. And I have discovered that he will find the female even if she be miles and miles away."

The man was grinning now in the dusk—grinning like a skull; but the girl's back was still turned and she merely found something in his voice not quite agreeable.

"I think," she said in a low, quiet voice, "that I have now heard sufficient about the Death's Head moth."

"Ah—have I offended mademoiselle? I ask a thousand pardons——"

Old Courtray awoke in the dusk.

"My quill, Maryette," he muttered, "—see if it floats yet?"

The girl bent over the water and strained her eyes. Her father tested the line with shaky hands. There was no fish on the hook.

"Voyons! The asticot also is gone. Some robber fish has been nibbling!" exclaimed the girl cheerfully, reeling in the line. "Father, one cannot fish and doze at the same time."

"Eternal vigilance is the price of success—in peace as well as in war," said Karl, the student, as he aided Maryette to raise her father from the chair.

"Vigilance," repeated the girl. "Yes, always now in France. Because always the enemy is listening." ... Her strong young arm around her father, she traversed the garden slowly toward the house. A pleasant odour came from the kitchen of the White Doe, where an old peasant woman was cooking.



CHAPTER XXII

THE SUSPECT

That night she wrote to her lover at the great hospital in the south, where he lay slowly growing well:

MY DJACK:

Today has been very beautiful, made so for me by my thoughts of you and by a warm September sun which makes for human happiness, too.

I am wearing my ribbon of the Legion. Ah, my Djack, it belongs more rightly to you, who would not let me go alone to Nivelle that dreadful day. Why do they not give you the cross? They must be very stupid in Paris.

All day my happy thoughts have been with you, my Djack. It all seems a blessed dream that we love each other. And I—oh, how could I have been so ignorant, so silly, not to know it sooner than I did!

I don't know; I thought it was friendship. And that was so wonderful to me that I never dreamed any other miracle possible!

Allons, my Djack. Come and instruct me quickly, because my desire for further knowledge is very ardent.

The news? Cher ami, there is little. Always the far thunder beyond Nivelle in ruins; sometimes a battle-plane high in the blue; a convoy of your beloved mules arriving from the coast; nothing more exciting.

Monsieur Smeet and Monsieur Glenn inquire always concerning you. They are brave and kind; their odd jests amuse me.

My father caught a tench in the Lesse this morning.

My gardener, Karl, collected many unpleasant creatures while hoeing our potatoes. Poor lad, he seems unhealthy. I am glad I could offer him employment.

My Djack, there could not possibly be any mistake about him, could there? His papers are en regle. He is what he pretends, a Belgian student from Ypres in distress and ill health, is he not?

But how can you answer me, you who lie there all alone in a hospital at Nice? Also, I am ashamed of myself for doubting the unfortunate young man. I am too happy to doubt anybody, perhaps.

And so good night, my Djack. Sleep sweetly, guarded by powerful angels.

Thy devoted, MARYETTE.

She had been writing in the deserted cafe. Now she took a candle and went slowly upstairs. On the white plaster wall of her bedroom was a Death's Head moth.

The girl, startled for an instant, stood still; an unfeigned shiver of displeasure passed over her. Not that the Death's Head was an unfamiliar or terrifying sight to her; in late summer she usually saw one or two which had flown through some lighted window.

But it was the amorous history of this creature which the student Karl had related that now repelled her. This night creature with the skull on its neck, once scarcely noticed, had now become a trifle repulsive.

She went nearer, lifting the lighted candle. The thing crouched there with slanted wings. It was newly hatched, its sleek body still wet with the humors of incubation—wet as a soaked mouse. Its abdomen, too, seemed enormous, all swelled and distended with unfertilized eggs. No, there could be no question concerning the sex of the thing; this was a female, and her tumefied body was almost bursting with eggs.

In startling design the yellow skull stood out; the ribs of the skeleton. Two tiny, fiery eyes glimmered at the base of the antennae—two minute jewelled sparks of glowing, lambent fire. They seemed to be watching her, maliciously askance.

The very horrid part of it was that, if touched, the creature would cry out. The girl knew this, hesitated, looked at the open window through which it must have crawled, and sat down on her bed to consider the situation.

"After all," she said to herself resolutely. "God made it. It is harmless. If God thought fit to paint one of his lesser creatures like a skeleton, perhaps it was to remind us that life is brief and that we should lose no time to live it nobly in His sight.... I think that perhaps explains it."

However, she did not undress.

"I am quite foolish to be afraid of this poor moth. I repeat that I am foolish. Allez—I am not afraid. I am no longer afraid. I—I admire this handiwork of God."

She sat looking at the creature, her hands lying clasped in her lap.

"It's a very odd thing," she said to herself, "that a lover can find this creature even if he be miles and miles away.... Maybe he's on his way now——"

Instinctively she sprang up and closed her bedroom window.

"No," she said, looking severely at the motionless moth, "you shall have no visitors in my room. You may remain here; I shall not disturb you; and tomorrow you will go away of your own accord. But I cannot permit you to receive company——"

A heavy fall on the floor above checked her. Breathless, listening, she crept to her door.

"Karl!" she called.

Listening again, she could hear distant and vaguely dreadful sounds from the gardener-student's room above.

She was frightened but she went up. The youth had had a bad hemorrhage. She sat beside him late into the night. After his breathing grew quieter, sitting there in silence she could hear odd sounds, rustling, squeaking sounds from the box of Death's Head chrysalids on the night table beside his bed.

The pupae of the Death's Head were making merry in anticipation of the rapidly approaching change—the Great Adventure of their lives—the coming metamorphosis.

The youth lay asleep now. As she extinguished the candle and stole from the room, all the pupae of the Death's Head began to squeak in the darkness.

—————————

The student-gardener could do no more work for the present. He lay propped up in bed, pasty, scarlet lipped, and he seemed bald and lidless, so colourless were hair and eye-lashes.

"Can I do anything for you, Karl?" asked Maryette, coming in for a moment as usual in the intervals of her many duties.

"The ink, if you would be so condescending—and a pen," he said, watching her out of hollow, sallow eyes of watery blue.

She fetched both from the cafe.

She came again in another hour, knocking at his door, but he said rather sharply that he wished to sleep.

Scarcely noticing the querulous tone, she departed. She had much to do besides her duties in the belfry. Her father was an invalid who required constant care; there was only one servant, an old peasant woman who cooked. The Government required her father to keep open the White Doe Tavern, and there was always a little business from the scanty garrison of Sainte Lesse, always a few meals to get, a few drinks to serve, and nobody now to do it except herself.

Then, in the belfry she had duties other than playing, than practice. Always at night the clock-drum was to be wound.

She had no assistant. The town maintained none, and her salary as Mistress of the Bells of Sainte Lesse did not permit her to engage anybody to help her.

So she oiled and wound all the machinery herself, adjusted and cared for the clock, swept the keyboard clean, inspected and looked after the wires leading to the tiers of bells overhead.

Then there was work to do in the garden—a few minutes snatched between other duties. And when night arrived at last she was rather tired—quite weary on this night in particular, having managed to fulfill all the duties of the sick youth as well as her own.

The night was warm and fragrant. She sat in the dark at her open window for a while, looking out into the north where, along the horizon, heat lightning seemed to play. But it was only the reflected flashes of the guns. When the wind was right, she could hear them.

She had even managed to write to her lover. Now, seated beside the open window, she was thinking of him. A dreamy, happy lethargy possessed her; she was on the first delicate verge of slumber, so close to it that all earthly sounds were dying out in her ears. Then, suddenly, she was awake, listening.

A window had been opened in the room overhead.

She went to the stars and called:

"Karl!"

"What?" came the impatient reply.

"Are you ill?"

"No. N-no, I thank you—" His voice became urbane with an apparent effort. "Thank you for inquiring——"

"I heard your window open—" she said.

"Thank you. I am quite well. The air is mild and grateful.... I thank mademoiselle for her solicitude."

She returned to her room and lighted her candle. On the white plaster wall sat the Death's Head moth.

She had not been in her room all day. She was astonished that the moth had not left.

"Shall I have to put you out?" she thought dubiously. "Really, I can not keep my window closed for fear of visitors for you, Madam Death! I certainly shall be obliged to put you out."

So she found a sheet of paper and a large glass tumbler. Over the moth she placed the tumbler, then slipped the sheet of paper under the glass between moth and wall.

The thing cried and cried, beating at the glass with wings as powerful as a bird's, and the girl, startled and slightly repelled, placed the moth on her night table, imprisoned under the tumbler.

For a while it fluttered and flapped and cried out in its strange, uncanny way, then settled on the sheet of paper, quivering its wings, both eyes like living coals.

Seated on the bedside, Maryette looked at it, schooling herself to think of it kindly as one of God's creatures before she released it at her open window.

And, as she sat there, something came whizzing into the room through her window, circled around her at terrific speed with a humming, whispering whirr, then dropped with a solid thud on the night table beside the imprisoned female moth.

It was the first suitor arrived from outer darkness—a big, powerful Death's Head moth with eyes aglow, the yellow skull displayed in startling contrast on his velvet-black body.

The girl watched him, fascinated. He scrambled over to the tumbler, tested it with heavy antennae; then, ardent and impatient, beat against the glass with muscular wings that clattered in the silence.

But it was not the amorous fury of the creature striking the tumbler with resounding wings, not the glowing eyes, the strong, clawed feet, the Death's Head staring from its funereal black thorax that held the girl's attention. It was something else; something entirely different riveted her eyes on the creature.

For the cigar-shaped body, instead of bearing the naked ribs of a skeleton, was snow white.

And now she began to understand. Somebody had already caught the moth, had wrapped around its body a cylinder of white tissue paper—tied it on with a fine, white silk thread.

The moth was very still now, exploring the interstices between tumbler and table with heavy, pectinated antennae.

Cautiously Maryette bent forward and dropped both hands on the moth.

Instantly the creature cried out horribly; it was like a mouse between her shrinking fingers; but she slipped the cylinder of tissue paper from its abdomen and released it with a shiver; and it darted and whizzed around the room, gyrating in whistling circles around her head until, unnerved, she struck at it again and again with empty hands, following, driving it toward the open window, out of which it suddenly darted.

But now there was another Death's Head in the room, a burly, headlong, infatuated male which drove headlong at the tumbler and clung to it, slipping, sliding, filling the room with a feathery tattoo of wings.

It, also, had a snow-white body; and before she had seized the squeaking thing and had slipped the tissue wrapper from its body, another Death's Head whirred through the window; then another, then two; then others. The room swarmed; they were crawling all over the tumbler, the table, the bed. The room was filled with the soft, velvety roar of whirring wings beating on wall and ceiling and against the tumbler where Madam Death sat imprisoned, quivering her wings, her eyes two molten rubies, and the ghastly skull staring from her back.

How Maryette ever brought herself to do it; how she did it at last, she had no very clear idea. The touch of the slippery, mousy bodies was fearsomely repugnant to her; the very sight of the great, skull-bearing things began to sicken her physically. A dreadful, almost impalpable floss from their handled wings and bodies smeared her hands; the place vibrated with their tiny goblin cries.

Somehow she managed to strip them of the tissue cylinders, drive them from where they crawled on ceiling, wall and sill into whistling flight. Amid a whirlwind of wings she fought them toward the open window; whizzing, flitting, circling they sped in widening spirals to escape her blows, where she stood half blinded in the vortex of the ghostly maelstrom.

One by one they darted through the open window out into the night; and when the last spectral streak of grey had sped into outer darkness the girl slammed the windowpanes shut and leaned against the sill enervated, exhausted, revolted.

The room was misty with the microscopic dust from the creatures' wings; on her palms and fingers were black stains and stains of livid orange; and across wall and ceiling streaks and smudges of rusty colour.

She was still trembling when she washed the smears from her hands. Her fingers were still unsteady as she smoothed out each tiny sheet of tissue paper and laid it on her night table. Then, seated on the bed's edge beside the lighted candle, she began to read the messages written in ink on these frail, translucent tissue missives.

Every bit of tissue bore a message; the writing was microscopic, the script German, the language Flemish. Slowly, with infinite pains, the little bell-mistress of Sainte Lesse translated to herself each message as she deciphered it.

She was trembling more than ever when she finished. Every trace of colour had fled from her cheeks.

Then, as she sat there, struggling to keep her mind clear of the horror of the thing, striving to understand what was to be done, there came upon her window pane a sudden muffled drumming sound, and her frightened gaze fell upon a Death's Head moth outside, its eyes like coals, its misty wings beating furiously for admittance. And around its body was tied a cylinder of white tissue.

But the girl needed no more evidence. The wretched youth in the room overhead had already sealed his own doom with any one of these tissue cylinders. Better for him if the hemorrhage had slain him. Now a firing squad must do that much for him.

Yet, even still, the girl hesitated, almost incredulous, trying to comprehend the monstrous grotesquerie of the abominable plot.

Intuition pointed to the truth; logic proved it; somewhere in the German trenches a comrade of this spy was awaiting these messages with a caged Death's Head female as the bait—a living loadstone wearing the terrific emblems of death—an unfailing magnet to draw the skull-bearing messengers for miles—had it not been that a nearer magnet deflected them in their flight!

That was it! That was what the miserable youth upstairs had not counted on. Chance had ruined him; destiny had sent Madam Death into the room below him to draw, with her macabre charms, every ardent winged messenger which he liberated from his bedroom window.

The subtle effluvia permeating the night air for miles around might have guided these messengers into the German trenches had not a nearer and more imperious perfume annihilated it. Headlong, amorous, impatient they had whirled toward the embraces of Madam Death; the nearer and more powerful perfume had drawn the half-maddened, half-drugged messengers. The spy in the room upstairs, like many Germans, had reasoned wrongly on sound premises. His logic had broken down, not his amazing scientific foundation. His theory was correct; his application stupid.

And now this young man was about to die. Maryette understood that. She comprehended that his death was necessary; that it was the unavoidable sequence of what he had attempted to do. Trapped rats must be drowned; vermin exterminated by easiest and quickest methods; spies who betray one's native land pass naturally the same route.

But this thing, this grotesque, incredible, terrible attempt to engraft treachery on one of nature's most amazing laws—this secret, cunning Teutonic reasoning, this scientific scoundrelism, this criminal enterprise based on patient, plodding and German efficiency, still bewildered the girl.

And yet she vaguely realized how science had been already prostituted to Prussian malignancy and fury; she had heard of flame jets, of tear-bombs, of bombs containing deadly germs; she herself had beheld the poison gas rolling back into the trenches at Nivelle under the town tower. Dimly she began to understand that the Hun, in his cunning savagery, had tricked, betrayed and polluted civilization itself into lending him her own secrets with which she was ultimately to be destroyed.

The very process of human thinking had been imitated by these monkeys of Europe—apes with the ferocity of hogs—and no souls, none—nothing to lift them inside the pale where dwells the human race.

There came a rapping on the cafe door. The girl rose wearily; an immense weight seemed to crush her shoulders so that her knees had become unsteady.

She opened the cafe door; it was Sticky Smith, come for his nightcap before turning in.

"The man upstairs is a German spy," she said listlessly. "Had you not better go over and get a gendarme?"

"Who's a spy? That Dutch shrimp you had in your garden?"

"Yes."

"Where is he?" demanded the muleteer with an oath.

She placed her lighted candle on the bar.

"Wait," she said. "Read these first—we must be quite certain about what we do."

She laid the squares of tissue paper out on the bar.

"Do you read Flemish?" she whispered.

"No, ma'am——"

"Then I will translate into French for you. And first of all I must tell you how I came to possess these little letters written upon tissue. Please listen attentively."