He rested his palm on the butt of his dangling automatic.

"Go on," he said.

She told him the circumstances.

As she commenced to translate the tissue paper messages in a low, tremulous voice, the sound of a door being closed and locked in the room overhead silenced her.

The next instant she had stepped out to the stairs and called:

"Karl!"

There was no reply. Smith came out to the stair-well and listened.

"It is his custom," she whispered, "to lock his door before retiring. That is what we heard."

"Call again."

"He can't hear me. He is in bed."

"Call, all the same."

"Karl!" she cried out in an unsteady voice.



CHAPTER XXIII

MADAM DEATH

There was no reply, because the young man was hanging out over his window sill in the darkness trying to switch away, from her closed window below, the big, clattering Death's Head moth which obstinately and persistently fluttered there.

What possessed the moth to continue battering its wings at the window of the room below? Had the other moths which he released done so, too? They had darted out of his room into the night, each garnished with a tissue robe. He supposed they had flown north; he had not looked out to see.

What had gone wrong with this moth, then?

He took his emaciated blond head between his bony fingers and pondered, probing for reason with German thoroughness—that celebrated thoroughness which is invariably riddled with flaws.

Of all contingencies he had thought—or so it seemed to him. He could not recollect any precaution neglected. He had come to Sainte Lesse for a clearly defined object and to make certain reports concerning matters of interest to the German military authorities north of Nivelle.

The idea, inspired by the experiments of Henri Fabre, was original with him. Patiently, during the previous year, he had worked it out—had proved his theory by a series of experiments with moths of this species.

He had arranged with his staff comrade, Dr. Glueck, for a forced hatching of the pupae which the latter had patiently bred from the enormous green and violet-banded caterpillars.

At least one female Death's Head must be ready, caged in the trenches beyond Nivelle. Hundreds of pupae could not have died. Where, then, was his error—if, indeed, he had made any?

Leaning from the window, he looked down at the frantic moth, perplexed, a little uneasy now.

"Swine!" he muttered. "What, then, ails you that you do not fly to the mistress awaiting you over yonder?"

He could see the cylinder of white tissue shining on the creature's body, where it fluttered against the pane, illuminated by the rays of the candle from within the young girl's room.

Could it be possible that the candle-light was proving the greater attraction?

Even as the possibility entered his mind, he saw another Death's Head dart at the window below and join the first one. But this newcomer wore no tissue jacket.

Then, out of the darkness the Death's Heads began to come to the window below, swarms of them, startling him with the racket of their wings.

From where did they arrive? They could not be the moths he liberated. But.... Were they? Had some accident robbed their bodies of the tissue missives? Had they blundered into somebody's room and been robbed?

Mystified, uneasy, he hung over his window sill, staring with sickening eyes at the winged tumult below.

With patient, plodding logic he began to seek for the solution. What attracted these moths to the room below? Was it the candle-light? That alone could not be sufficient—could not contend with the more imperious attraction, the subtle effluvia stealing out of the north and appealing to the ruling passion which animated the frantic winged things below him.

Patiently, methodically in his mind he probed about for some clue to the solution. The ruling passion animating the feathery whirlwind below was the necessity for mating and perpetuating the species.

That was the dominant passion; the lure of candle-light a secondary attraction.... Then, if this were so—and it had been proven to be a fact—then—then—what was in that young girl's bedroom just below him?

Even as the question flashed in his mind he left the window, went to his door, listened, noiselessly unlocked it.

A low murmur of voices came from the cafe.

He drew off both shoes, descended the stairs on the flat pads of his large, bony feet, listening all the while.

Candle-light streamed out into the corridor from her open bedroom door; and he crept to the sill and peered in, searching the place with small, pale eyes.

At first he noticed nothing to interest him, then, all in an instant, his gaze fell upon Madam Death under her prison of glass.

There she sat, her great bulging abdomen distended with eggs, her lambent eyes shining with the terrible passion of anticipation. For one thing only she had been created. That accomplished she died. And there she crouched awaiting the fulfillment of her life's cycle with the blazing eyes of a demon.

—————————

From the cafe below came the cautious murmur of voices. The young man already knew what they were whispering about; or, if he did not know he no longer cared.

The patches of bright colour in his sunken cheeks had died out in an ashen pallor. As far as he was concerned the world was now ended. And he knew it.

He went into the bedroom and sat down on the bed's edge. His little, pale eyes wandered about the white room; the murmur of voices below was audible all the while.

After a few moments' patient waiting, his gaze rested again on Madam Death, squatting there with wings sloped, and the skull and bones staring at him from her head and distended abdomen.

After all there was an odd resemblance between himself and Madam Death. He had been born to fulfill one function, it appeared. So had she. And now, in his case as in hers, death was immediately to follow. This was sentiment, not science—the blind lobe of the German brain balancing grotesquely the reasoning lobe.

—————————

The voices below had ceased. Presently he heard a cautious step on the stair.

He had a little pill-box in his pocket. Methodically, without haste, he drew it out, chose one white pellet, and, holding it between his bony thumb and forefinger, listened.

Yes, somebody was coming up the stairs, very careful to make no sound.

Well—there were various ways for a Death's Head Hussar to die for his War Lord. All were equally laudable. God—the God of Germany—the celestial friend and comrade of his War Lord—would presently correct him if he was transgressing military discipline or the etiquette of Kultur. As for the levelled rifles of the execution squad, he preferred another way.... This way!...

His eyes were already glazing when the burly form of Sticky Smith filled the doorway.

He looked down at Madam Death under the tumbler beside him, then lifted his head and gazed at Smith with blinded eyes.

"Swine!" he said complacently, swaying gently forward and striking the floor with his face.



CHAPTER XXIV

BUBBLES

An east wind was very likely to bring gas to the trenches north of the Sainte Lesse salient. A north wind, according to season, brought snow or rain or fog upon British, French, Belgian and Boche alike. Winds of the south carried distant exhalations from orchards and green fields into the pitted waste of ashes where that monstrous desolation stretched away beneath a thundering iron rain which beat all day, all night upon the dead flesh of the world.

But the west wind was the vital wind, flowing melodiously through the trees—a clean, aromatic, refreshing wind, filling the sickened world with life again.

Sometimes, too, it brought the pleasant music of the bells into far-away trenches, when the little bell-mistress of Sainte Lesse played the carillon. And when her friend, the great bell, Bayard, spoke through the resounding sky of France to a million men-at-arms in blue and steel, who were steadily forging hell's manacles for the uncaged Hun, the loyal western wind carried far beyond the trenches an ominous iron vibration that meant doom for the Beast.

And the Beast heard, leering skyward out of pale pig-eyes, but did not comprehend.

At the base corral down in the meadow, mules had been scarce recently, because a transport had been torpedoed. But the next transport from New Orleans escaped; the dusty column had arrived at Sainte Lesse from the Channel port, convoyed by American muleteers, as usual; new mules, new negroes, new Yankee faces invaded the town once more.

However, it signified little to the youthful mistress-of-the-bells, Maryette Courtray, called "Carillonnette," for her Yankee lover still lay in his distant hospital—her muleteer, "Djack." So mules might bray, and negroes fill the Sainte Lesse meadows with their shouting laughter; and the lank, hawk-nosed Yankee muleteers might saunter clanking into the White Doe in search of meat or drink or tobacco, or a glimpse of the pretty bell-mistress, for all it meant to her.

Her Djack lived; that was what occupied her mind; other men were merely men—even his comrades, Sticky Smith and Kid Glenn, assumed individuality to distinguish them from other men only because they were Djack's friends. And as for all other muleteers, they seemed to her as alike as Chinamen, leaving upon her young mind a general impression of long, thin legs and necks and the keen eyes of hunting falcons.

—————————

She had washing to do that morning. Very early she climbed up into the ancient belfry, wound the drum so that the bells would play a few bars at the quarters and before each hour struck; and also in order that the carillon might ring mechanically at noon in case she had not returned to take her place at the keyboard with her wooden gloves.

There was a light west wind rippling through the tree tops; and everywhere sunshine lay brilliant on pasture and meadow under the purest of cobalt skies.

In the garden her crippled father, swathed in shawls, dozed in his deep chair beside the river-wall, waking now and then to watch the quill on his long bamboo fish-pole, stemming the sparkling current of the little river Lesse.

Sticky Smith, off duty and having filled himself to repletion with cafe-au-lait at the inn, volunteered to act as nurse, attendant, remover of fish and baiter of hook, while Maryette was absent at the stone-rimmed pool where the washing of all Sainte Lesse laundry had been accomplished for hundreds of years.

"You promise not to go away?" she cautioned him in the simple, first-aid French she employed in speaking to him, and pausing with both arms raised to balance the loaded clothes-basket on her head.

"Wee—wee!" he assured her with dignity. "Je fume mong peep! Je regard le vieux pecher. Voo poovay allay, Mademoiselle Maryette."

She hesitated, then removed the basket from her head and set it on the grass.

"You are very kind, Monsieur Steek-Smeet. I shall wash your underwear the very first garments I take out of my basket. Thank you a thousand times." She bent over with sweet solicitude and pressed her lips to her father's withered cheek:

"Au revoir, my father cheri. An hour or two at the meadow-lavoir and I shall return to find thee. Bonne chance, mon pere! Thou shalt surely catch a large and beautiful fish for luncheon before I return with my wash."

She swung the basket of wash to her head again without effort, and went her way, following the deeply trodden sheep-path behind the White Doe Inn.

The path wound down through a sloping pasture, across a footbridge spanning an arm of the Lesse which washed the base of the garden wall, then ascended a gentle aclivity among hazel thicket and tall sycamores, becoming for a little distance a shaded wood-path where thrushes sang ceaselessly in the sun-flecked undergrowth.

But at the eastern edge of the copse the little hill fell away into an open, sunny meadow, fragrant with wild-flowers and clover, through which a rivulet ran deep and cold between grassy banks.

It supplied the drinking water of Sainte Lesse; and a branch of it poured bubbling into the stone-rimmed lavoir where generations of Sainte Lesse maids had scrubbed the linen of the community, kneeling there amid wild flowers and fluttering butterflies in the shade of three tall elms.

There was nobody at the pool; Maryette saw that as she came out of the hazel copse through the meadow. And very soon she was on her knees at the clear pool's edge, bare of arm and throat and bosom, her blue wool skirts trussed up, and elbow deep in snowy suds.

Overhead the sky was a quivering, royal blue; the earth shimmered in its bath of sunshine; the west wind blowing carried away eastward the reverberations of the distant cannonade, so that not even the vibration of the concussions disturbed Sainte Lesse.

A bullfinch was piping lustily in a young tree as she began her task; a blackbird answered from somewhere among the hawthorns with a bewildering series of complicated trills.

As the little mistress-of-the-bells scrubbed and beat the clothes with her paddle, and rinsed and wrung them and soaped them afresh, she sang softly under her breath, to an ancient air of her pays, words that she improvised to fit it—vrai chanson de laveuse:

"A blackbird whistles I love! Over the thistles Butterflies hover, Each with her lover In love. Blue Demoiselles that glisten, Listen, I love! Wind of the west, oh, listen, I am in love! Sing my song, ye little gold bees! Opal bubbles around my knees All afloat in the soap-sud broth, Whisper it low to the snowy froth; And Thou who rulest the skies above, Mary, adored—I love—I love!"

Slap-slap! went her paddle; the sud-spume flew like shreds of cotton; iridescent foam set with bubbles swirled in the stone-edged basin, constantly swept away down stream by the current, constantly renewed as she soaped and scrubbed, kneeling there in the meadow grass above the pool.

The blackbird came quite near to watch her; the bullfinch, attracted by her childish voice as she sang the song she was making, whistled bold response, silent only when the echoing slap of the paddle startled him where he sat on the trembling tip of an aspen.

Blue dragon flies drifted on glimmering wings; she put them into her song; the meadow was gay with butterflies' painted wings; she sang about them, too. Cloud and azure sky, tree tops and clover, the tiny rivulet dancing through deep grasses, the wind furrowing the fields, all these she put into her chansonnette de laveuse. And always in the clear glass of the stream she seemed to see the smiling face of her friend, Djack—her lover who had opened her eyes of a child to all things beautiful in the world.

Once or twice, from very far away, she fancied she heard the distant singing of the negro muleteers sunning themselves down by the corral. She heard, at quarter-hour intervals, her bells melodiously recording time as it sped by; then there were intervals of that sweet stillness which is but a composite harmony of summer—the murmur of insects, the whisper of leaves and water, capricious seconds of intense silence, then the hushed voice of life exquisitely audible again.

War, wickedness, the rage and cruelty of the Beast—all the vile and filthy ferocity of the ferocious Swine of the North became to her as unreal as a tragic legend half-forgotten. And death seemed very far away.

—————————

Her washing was done; the wet clothing piled in her basket. Perspiration powdered her forehead and delicate little nose.

Hot, flushed, breathing deeply and irregularly from her efforts under a vertical sun, she stood erect, loosening the blouse over her bosom to the breeze and pushing back the clustering masses of hair above her brow.

The water laughed up at her, invitingly; the last floating castle of white foam swept past her feet down stream. On the impulse of the moment she unlaced her blue wool skirt, dropped it around her feet, stepped from it; unbuckled both garters, stripped slippers and stockings from her feet, and waded out into the pool.

The fresh, delicious coolness of the water thrilled and encouraged her to further adventure; she twisted up her splendid hair, bound it with her blue kerchief, flung blouse and chemisette from her, and gave herself to the sparkling stream with a sigh of ecstasy.

Alders swept the eastern edges of the current where the rivulet widened beyond the basin and ran south along the meadow's edge to the Wood of Sainte Lesse—a cool, unruffled flow, breast deep, floored with sand as soft as silver velvet.

She waded, floated, swam a little, or, erect, roamed leisurely along the alder fringe, exploring the dim green haunts of frog and water-hen, stoat and becassine—a slim, wet dryad, gliding silently through sun and dappled shadow.

Where the stream comes to Sainte Lesse Wood, there is a hill set thick with hazel and clumps of fern, haunted by one roe-deer and numerous rabbits and pheasants.

She was close to its base, now, gliding through the shade like some lithe creature of the forest; making no sound save where the current curled around her supple body in twisted necklaces of liquid light.

Then, as she stood, peering cautiously through tangled branches for a glimpse of the little roe-deer, she heard a curious sound up on the hill—an inexplicable sound like metal striking stone.

She stood as though frozen; clink, clink came the distant sound. Then all was still. But presently she saw a scared cock-pheasant, crouching low with flattened neck outstretched, run like a huge rat through the hazel growth, out across the meadow.

She remained motionless, scarcely daring to draw her breath. Somebody had passed over the hill—if, indeed, he or she had actually continued on their mysterious way. Had they? But finally the intense quiet reassured her, and she concluded that whoever had made that metallic sound had continued on toward Sainte Lesse Wood.

She had taken with her a cake of soap. Now, here in the green shade, she made her ablutions, soaping herself from head to foot, turning her head leisurely from time to time to survey her leafy environment, or watch the flight of some tiny woodland bird, or study with pretty and speculative eyes the soap-suds swirling in a dimpled whirlpool around her thighs.

The bubbles fascinated her; she played with them, capriciously, touching one here, one there, with tentative finger to see them explode in a tiny rainbow shower.

Finally she chose a hollow stem from among a cluster of scented rushes, cleared it with a vigorous breath, soaped one end, and, touching it to the water, blew from it a prodigious bubble, all swimming with gold and purple hues.

Into the air she tossed it, from the end of the hollow reed; the breeze caught it and wafted it upward until it burst.

Then a strange thing happened! Before her upturned eyes another bubble slowly arose from a clump of aspens out of the hazel thickets on the hill—a big, pearl-tinted, translucent bubble, as large as a melon. Upward it floated, slowly ascending to the tree-tops. There the wind caught it, drove it east, but it still mounted skyward, higher, higher, sailing always eastward, until it dwindled to the size of a thistledown and faded away in mid-air.

Astounded, the little mistress-of-the-bells stood motionless, waist deep in the stream, lips parted, eyes straining to pierce the dazzling ether above.

And then, before her incredulous gaze, another pearl-tinted, translucent bubble slowly floated upward from the thicket near the aspens, mounted until the breeze struck it, then soared away skyward and melted like a snowflake into the east.

Moving as stealthily as some sinuous creature of the water-weeds, the girl stole forward, threading her way among the rushes, gliding, twisting around tussock and alder, creeping along fern-set banks, her eyes ever focused on the clump of aspens quivering against the sky above the hazel.

She could see nobody, hear not a sound from the thicket on the little hill. But another bubble rose above the aspens as she looked.

Naked, she dared not advance into the woods—scarcely dared linger where she was, yet found enough courage to creep out on a carpet of moss and lie flat under a young fir, listening and watching.

No more bubbles rose above the aspens; there was not a sound, not a movement in the hazel.

For an hour or more she lay there; then, with infinite caution, she slipped back into the stream, waded across, crept into the meadow, and sped like a scared fawn along the bank until she stood panting by the stone-rimmed pool again.

Sun and wind had dried her skin; she dressed rapidly, swung her basket to her head, and started swiftly for Sainte Lesse.

Before she came in sight of the White Doe Tavern, she could hear the negro muleteers singing down by the corral. Sticky Smith still squatted in the garden by the river-wall, smoking his pipe. Her father lay asleep in his chair, his wrinkled hands still clasping the fishing pole, the warm breeze blowing his white hair at the temples.

She disposed of the wash; then she and Sticky Smith gently aroused the crippled bell-master and aided him into the house.

The old peasant woman who cooked for the inn had soup ready. The noonday meal in Sainte Lesse had become an extremely simple affair.

"Monsieur Steek," said the girl carelessly, "did you ever, as a child, fly toy balloons?"

"Sure, Maryette. A old Eyetalian wop used to come 'round town selling them. He had a stick with about a hundred little balloons tied to it—red, blue, green, yellow—all kinds and colours. Whenever I had the price I bought one."

"Did it fly?"

"Yes. The gas in it wasn't much good unless you got a fresh one."

"Would it fly high?"

"Sure. Sky-high. I've seen 'em go clean out of sight when you got a fresh one."

"Nobody uses them here, do they?"

"Here? No, it wouldn't be allowed. A spy could send a message by one of those toy balloons."

"Oh," nodded Maryette thoughtfully.

Smith shook his head:

"No, children wouldn't be permitted to play with them things now, Maryette."

"Then there are not any toy balloons to be had here in Sainte Lesse?"

"I rather guess not! Farther north there are."

"Where?"

"The artillery uses them."

"How?"

"I don't know. The balloon and flying service use 'em, too. I've seen officers send them up. Probably it is to find out about upper air currents."

"Our flying service?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Ballons d'essai," she nodded carelessly. But she was not yet entirely convinced regarding the theory she was pondering.

After lunch she continued to be very busy in the laundry for a time, but the memory of those three little balloons above the aspens troubled her.

Smith had gone on duty at the corral; Kid Glenn sauntered clanking into the bar and was there regaled with a bock and a tranche.

"Monsieur Keed," said Maryette, "are any of our airmen in Sainte Lesse today?"

Glenn drained his glass and smacked his lips:

"No, ma'am," he said.

"No balloonists, either?"

"I don't guess so, Maryette. We've got the Boche flyers scared stiff. They don't come over our first lines anymore, and our own people are out yonder."

"Keed," she said, winningly sweet, "do you, in fact, love me a little—for Djack's sake?"

"Yes'm."

"I borrow of you that automatic pistol. Yes?" She smiled at him engagingly.

"Sure. Anything you want! What's the trouble, Maryette?"

She shrugged her pretty shoulders:

"Nothing. It just came into my cowardly head that the path to the lavoir is lonely at sundown. And there are new muleteers in Sainte Lesse. And I must wash my clothes."

"I reckon," he said gravely, unbuckling his weapon-filled holster and quietly strapping it around her shoulder with its pocketed belt of clips.

"You will not require it this afternoon?" she asked.

"No fear. You won't either. Them mule-whacking coons is white."

She understood.

"Some men who seem whitest are blacker than any negro," she remarked. "Eh, bien! I thank you, Keed, mon ami, for your complaisance. You are very amiable to submit to the whim of a silly girl who suddenly becomes afraid of her own shadow."

Glenn grinned and glanced significantly at the cross dangling from her bosom:

"Sure," he said, "your government decorates cowards. That's why it gave you the Legion."

She blushed but looked up at him seriously:

"Keed, if I flew a little toy balloon in the air, where would the west wind carry it?"

"Into the Boche trenches," he replied, much interested in the idea. "If you've got one, we'll paint 'To hell with Willie' on it and set it afloat! But we'll have to get permission from the gendarmes first."

She said, smiling:

"I'm sorry, but I haven't any toy balloons."

She picked up her basket with its new load of soiled linen, swung it gracefully to her head, ignoring his offered assistance, gave him a beguiling glance, and went away along the sheep-path.

Once more she followed the deep-trodden and ancient trail through copse and pasture and over the stream down into the meadow, where the west wind furrowed the wild-flowers and the early afternoon sun fell hot.

She set her clothes to soak, laid paddle and soap beside them, then, straightening up, remained erect on her knees, her intent gaze fixed on the distant clump of aspens, delicate as mist above the hazel copse on the little hill beyond.

It was a whole hour before her eyes caught the high glimmer of a tiny balloon. Only for a moment was it visible at that distance, then it became merged in the dazzling blue above the woods.

She waited. At last she concluded that there were to be no more balloons. Then a sudden fear assailed her lest she had waited too long to investigate; and she sprang to her feet, hurried over the single plank used as a footbridge, and sped down through the alders.

Here and there a pheasant ran headlong across her path; a rabbit or two scuttled through the ferns. Nearing the hazel copse she slackened speed and advanced with caution, scanning the thicket ahead.

Suddenly, on the ground in front of her, she caught sight of a small iron cylinder. Evidently it had rolled down there from the slope above.

Very gingerly she approached and picked it up. It was not very heavy, not too big for her skirt pocket.

As she slipped it into the pocket of her blue woolen peasant-skirt, her quick eye caught a movement among the hazel bushes on the hillside to her right. She sank to the ground and lay huddled there.



CHAPTER XXV

KAMERAD

Down the slope, through the thicket, came a man. She could see his legs only. He wore dust-coloured breeches and tan puttees, like Sticky Smith's and Kid Glenn's, only he wore no big, clanking Mexican spurs.

The man passed in front of her, his burly body barely visible through the leaves, but not his features.

She rose, turned, ran over the moss, hurried through the ferns of the warren, retracing her steps, and arrived breathless at the lavoir. And scarcely had she dropped to her knees and seized soap and paddle, than a squat, bronzed, powerfully built young man appeared on the opposite bank of the stream, stepping briskly out of the bushes.

He did not notice her at first. He looked about for a place to jump, found one, leaped safely across, and came on at a swinging stride across the meadow.

The girl, bending above the water, suddenly struck sharply with her paddle.

Instantly the man halted in his tracks, knee deep in clover.

Maryette, apparently unconscious of his presence, continued to soap and scrub and slap her wash, singing in her clear, untrained voice of a child the chansonette she had made that morning. But out of the corner of her eyes she kept him in view—saw him come sauntering forward as though reassured, became aware that he had approached very near, was standing behind her.

Turning presently, where she knelt, to pick up another soiled garment, she suddenly encountered his dark gaze; and her start and slight exclamation were entirely genuine.

"Mon Dieu!" she said, with offended emphasis, "one does not approach people that way, without a word!"

"Did I frighten mademoiselle?" he asked, in recognizable French, but with an accent unpleasantly familiar to her. "If I did, I am very sorry and I offer mademoiselle a thousand excuses and apologies."

The girl, kneeling there in the clover, flashed a smile at him over her shoulder. The quick colour reddened his face and powerful neck. The girl had been right; her smile had been an answer that he was not going to ignore.

"What a pretty spot for a lavoir," he said, stepping to the edge of the pool; "and what a pretty girl to adorn it!"

Maryette tossed her head:

"Be pleased to pass your way, monsieur. Do you not perceive that I am busy?"

"It is not impossible to exchange a polite word or two when people are busy, is it, mademoiselle?" he asked, laughing and showing a white and perfect set of teeth under a short, dark mustache.

She continued to wring out her wash; but there was now a slight smile on her lips.

"May I not say who I am?" he asked persuasively. "May I not venture to speak?"

"Mon dieu, monsieur, there is liberty of speech for all in France. That blackbird might be glad to know your name if you choose to tell him."

"But I ask your permission to speak to you!" There seemed to be no sense of humour in this young man.

She laughed:

"I am not curious to hear who you are!... But if it affords you any relief to explain to the west wind what your name may be—" She ended with a disdainful shrug. After a moment she lifted her pretty eyes to his—lovely, provocative, tormenting eyes. But they were studying the stranger closely.

He was a powerfully built, dark-skinned young man in the familiar khaki of the American muleteers, wearing their insignia, their cap, their holster and belt, and an extra pouch or wallet, loaded evidently with something heavy.

She said, coolly:

"You must be one of the new Yankee muleteers who came with that beautiful new herd of mules."

He laughed:

"Yes, I'm an American muleteer. My name is Charles Braun. I came over in the last transport."

"You know Steek?"

"Who?"

"Steek! Monsieur Steekee Smeete?"

"Sticky Smith?"

"Mais oui?"

"I've met him," he replied curtly.

"And Monsieur Keed Glenn?"

"I've met Kid Glenn, too. Why?"

"They are friends of mine—very intimate friends. Of course," she added, nose up-tilted, "if they are not also your friends, any acquaintance with me will be very difficult for you, Monsieur Braun."

He laughed easily and seated himself on the grass beside her; and, as he sat down, a metallic clinking sounded in his wallet.

"Tenez," she remarked, "you carry old iron and bottles about with you, I notice."

"Snaffles, curbs and stirrup irons," he replied carelessly. And in the girl's heart there leaped the swift, fierce flame of certainty in suspicion.

"Why do you bring all that ironmongery down here?" she inquired, with frankly childish curiosity, leisurely wringing out her linen.

"A mule got away from the corral. I've been wandering around in the bushes trying to find him," he explained, so naturally and in such a friendly voice that she raised her eyes to look again at this young gallant who lingered here at the lavoir for the sake of her beaux yeux.

Could this dark-eyed, smiling youth be a Hun spy? His smooth, boyish features, his crisp short hair and tiny mustache shading lips a trifle too red and overfull did not displease her. In his way he was handsome.

His voice, too, was attractive, gaily persuasive, but it was his pronunciation of the letters c and d which had instantly set her on her guard.

Seated on the bank near her, his roving eyes full of bold curiosity bent on her from time to time, his idle fingers plaiting a little wreath out of long-stemmed clover and boutons d'or, he appeared merely an intrusive, irresponsible young fellow willing to amuse himself with a few moments' rustic courtship here before he continued on his way.

"You are exceedingly pretty," he said. "Will you tell me your name in exchange for mine?"

"Maryette Courtray."

"Oh," he exclaimed in quick recognition; "you are bell-mistress in Sainte Lesse, then! You are the celebrated carillonnette! I have heard about you. I suspected that you might be the little mistress of Sainte Lesse bells, because you wear the Legion—" He nodded his handsome head toward the decoration on her blouse.

"And to think," he added effusively, "that it is just a mere slip of a girl who was decorated for bravery by France!"

She smiled at him with all the beguilingly bete innocence of the young when flattered:

"You are too amiable, monsieur. I really do not understand why they gave me the Legion. To encourage all French children, perhaps—because I really am a dreadful coward." She tapped the holster on her thigh and gazed at him quite guilelessly out of wide and trustful eyes. "You see? I dare not even come here to wash my clothes unless I carry this—in case some Boche comes prowling."

"Whose pistol is it?" he asked.

"The weapon belongs to Monsieur Steek. When I come to wash here I borrow it."

"Are you the sweetheart of Monsieur Steek?" he inquired, mimicking her pronunciation of "Stick," and at the same time fixing his dark eyes boldly and expressively on hers.

"Does a young girl of my age have sweethearts?" she demanded scornfully.

"If she hasn't had one, it's time," he returned, staring hard at her with a persistent and fixed smile that had become almost offensive.

"Oh, la!" she exclaimed with a shrug of her youthful shoulders. "Perhaps you think I have time for such foolishness—what with housework to do and washing, and caring for my father, and my duties in the belfry every day!"

"Youth passes swiftly, belle Maryette."

"Imitate him, beau monsieur, and swiftly pass your way!"

"L'amour est doux, petite Marie!"

"Je m'en moque!"

He rose, smiling confidently, dropped on his knees beside her, and rolled back his cuffs.

"Come," he said, "I'll help you wash. We two should finish quickly."

"I am in no haste."

"But it will give you an hour's leisure, belle Maryette."

"Why should I wish for leisure, beau monsieur?"

"I shall try to instruct you why, when we have our hour together."

"Do you mean to pay court to me?"

"I am doing that now. My ardent courtship will already be accomplished, so that we need not waste our hour together!" He began to laugh and wring out the linen.

"Monsieur," she expostulated smilingly, "your apropos disturbs me. Have you the assurance to believe that you already appeal to my heart?"

"Have I not appealed to it a little, Maryette?"

The girl averted her head coquettishly. For a few minutes they scrubbed away there together, side by side on their knees above the rim of the pool. Then, without warning, his hot, red lips burned her neck. Her swift recoil was also a shudder; her face flushed.

"Don't do that!" she said sharply, straightening up in the grass where she was kneeling.

"You are so adorable!" he pleaded in a low, tense voice.

There was a long silence. She had moved aside and away from him on her knees; her head remained turned, too, and her features were set as though carven out of rosy marble.

She was summoning every atom of resolution, every particle of courage to do what she must do. Every fibre in her revolted with the effort; but she steeled herself, and at last the forced smile was stamped on her lips, and she dared turn her head and meet his burning gaze.

"You frighten me," she said—and her unsteady voice was convincing. "A young girl is not courted so abruptly."

"Forgive me," he murmured. "I could not help myself—your neck is so fragrant, so childlike——"

"Then you should treat me as you would a child!" she retorted pettishly. "Amuse me, if you aspire to any comradeship with me. Your behaviour does not amuse me at all."

"We shall become comrades," he said confidently, "and you shall be sufficiently amused."

"It requires time for two people to become comrades."

"Will you give me an hour this evening?"

"What? A rendezvous?" she exclaimed, laughing.

"Yes."

"You mean somewhere alone with you?"

"Will you, Maryette?"

"But why? I am not yet old enough for such foolishness. It would not amuse me at all to be alone with you for an hour." She pouted and shrugged and absently plucked a hollow stem from the sedge.

"It would amuse me much more to sit here and blow bubbles," she added, clearing the stem with a quick breath and soaping the end of it.

Then, with tormenting malice, she let her eyes rest sideways on him while she plunged the hollow stem into the water, withdrew it, dripping, and deliberately blew an enormous golden bubble from the end.

"Look!" she cried, detaching the bubble, apparently enchanted to see it float upward. "Is it not beautiful, my fairy balloon?"

On her knees there beside the basin she blew bubble after bubble, detaching each with a slight movement of her wrist, and laughing delightedly to see them mount into the sunshine.

"You are a child," he said, worrying his red underlip with his teeth. "You're a baby, after all."

She said:

"Very well, then, children require toys to amuse them, not sighs and kisses and bold, brown eyes to frighten and perplex them. Have you any toys to amuse me if I give you an hour with me?"

"Maryette, I can easily teach you——"

"No! Will you bring me a toy to amuse me?—a clay pipe to blow bubbles? I adore bubbles."

"If I promise to amuse you, will you give me an hour?" he asked.

"How can I?" she demanded with sudden caprice. "I have my wash to finish; then I have to see that my father has his soup; then I must attend to customers at the inn, go up to the belfry, oil the machinery, play the carillon later, wind the drum for the night——"

"I shall come to you in the tower after the angelus," he said eagerly.

"I shall be too busy——"

"After the carillon, then! Promise, Maryette!"

"And sit up there alone with you in the dark for an hour? Ma foi! How amusing!" She laughed in pretty derision. "I shall not even be able to blow bubbles!"

Watching her pouting face intently, he said:

"Suppose I bring some toy balloons for you to fly from the clock tower? Would that amuse you—you beautiful, perverse child?"

"Little toy balloons!" she echoed, enchanted. "What pleasure to set them afloat from the belfry! Do you really promise to bring me some little toy balloons to fly?"

"Yes. But you must promise not to speak about it to anybody."

"Why?"

"Because the gendarmes wouldn't let us fly any balloons."

"You mean that they might think me a spy?" she inquired naively.

"Or me," he rejoined with a light laugh. "So we shall have to be very discreet and go cautiously about our sport. And it ought to be great fun, Maryette, to sail balloons out over the German trenches. We'll tie a message to every one! Shall we, little comrade?"

She clapped her hands.

"That will enrage the Boches!" she cried, "You won't forget to bring the balloons?"

"After the carillon," he nodded, staring at her intently.

"Half past ten," she said; "not one minute earlier. I cannot be disturbed when playing. Do you understand? Do you promise?"

"Yes," he said, "I promise not to bother you before half past ten."

"Very well. Now let me do my washing here in peace."

—————————

She was still scrubbing her linen when he went reluctantly away across the meadow toward Sainte Lesse. And when she finally stood up, swung the basket to her head, and left the meadow, the sun hung low behind Sainte Lesse Wood and a rose and violet glow possessed the world.

At the White Doe Inn she flew feverishly about her duties, aiding the ancient peasant woman with the simple preparations for dinner, giving her father his soup and helping him to bed, swallowing a mouthful herself as she hastened to finish her household tasks.

Kid Glenn came in as usual for an aperitif while she was gathering up her wooden gloves.

"Did a mule stray today from your corral?" she asked, filling his glass for him.

"No," he said.

"Are you sure?"

"Dead certain. Why?"

"Do you know one of the new muleteers named Braun?"

"I know him by sight."

"Keed!" she said, going up to him and placing both hands on his broad shoulders; "I play the carillon after the angelus. Bring Steek to the bell-tower half an hour after you hear the carillon end. You will hear it end; you will hear the quarter hour strike presently. Half an hour later, after the third quarter hour strikes, you shall arrive. Bring pistols. Do you promise?"

"Sure! What's the row, Maryette?"

"I don't know yet. I think we shall find a spy in the tower."

"Where?"

"In the belfry, parbleu! And you and Steek shall come up the stairs and you shall wait in the dark, there where the keyboard is, and where you see all the wires leading upward. You shall listen attentively, and I will be on the landing above, among my bells. And when you hear me cry out to you, then you shall come running with pistols!"

"For heaven's sake——"

"Is it understood? Give me your word, Keed!"

"Sure!——"

"Allons! Assez!" she whispered excitedly. "Make prisoner any man you see there!—any man! You understand?"

"You bet!"

"Any man!" she repeated slowly, "even if he wears the same uniform you wear."

There was a silence. Then:

"By God!" said Glenn under his breath.

"You suspect?"

"Yes. And if it is one of our German-American muleteers, we'll lynch him!" he whispered in a white rage.

But Maryette shook her head.

"No," she said in a dull, even voice, "let the gendarmerie take him in charge. Spy or suspect, he must have his chance. That is the law in France."

"You don't give rats a chance, do you?"

"I give everything its chance," she said simply. "And so does my country."

She drew the automatic pistol from her holster, examined it, raised her eyes gravely to the American beside her:

"This is terrible for me," she added, in a low but steady voice. "If it were not for my country—" She made a grave gesture, turned, and went slowly out through the arched stone passage into the main street of the town. A few minutes later the angelus sounded sweetly over the woods and meadows of Sainte Lesse.

—————————

At ten, as the last stroke of the hour ended, there came a charming, intimate little murmur of awakening bells; it grew sweeter, clearer, filling the starry sky, growing, exquisitely increasing in limpid, transparent volume, sweeping through the high, dim belfry like a great wind from Paradise carrying Heaven's own music out over the darkened earth.

All Sainte Lesse came to its doorways to listen to the playing of their beloved Carillonnette; the bell-music ebbed and swelled under the stars; the ancient Flemish masterpiece, written by some carillonneur whose bones had long been dust, became magnificently vital again under the enchanted hands of the little mistress of the bells.

In fifteen minutes the carillon ended; a slight pause followed, then the quarter hour struck.

With the last stroke of the bell, the girl drew off her wooden gloves, laid them on the keyboard, turned slowly in her seat, listening. A slight sound coming from the spiral staircase of stone set her heart beating violently. Had the suspected man violated his word? She drew the automatic pistol from her holster, rose, and stole up to the stone platform overhead, where, rising tier on tier into the darkness, the great carillon of Sainte Lesse loomed overhead.

She listened uneasily. Had the man lied? It seemed to her as though her hammering heart must burst from her bosom with the terrible suspense of the moment.

Suddenly a shadowy form appeared at the head of the stairs, reaching the platform at one bound. And her heart seemed to stop as she realized that this man had arrived too early for her friends to be of any use to her. He had lied to her. And now she must take him unaided, or kill him there in the starlight under the looming bells.

"Maryette!" he called. She did not stir.

"Maryette!" he whispered. "Where are you, little sweetheart? Forgive me, I could not wait any longer. I adore you——"

All at once he discovered her standing motionless in the shadow of the great bell Bayard—sprang toward her, eager, ardent, triumphant.

"Maryette," he whispered, "I love you! I shall teach you what a lover is——"

Suddenly he caught a glimpse of her face; the terrible expression in her eyes checked him.

"What has happened?" he asked, bewildered. And then he caught sight of the pistol in her hand.

"What's that for?" he demanded harshly. "Are you afraid to love me? Do you think I'm the kind of lover to stop for a thing like that——"

She said, in a low, distinct voice:

"Don't move! Put up both hands instantly!"

"What!" he snapped out, like the crack of a lash.

"I know who you are. You're a Boche and no Yankee! Turn your back and raise your arms!"

For a moment they looked at each other.

"I think," she said, steadily, "you had better explain your gas cylinders and balloons to the gendarmes at the Poste."

"No," he said, "I'll explain them to you, now!——"

"If you touch your pistol, I fire!——"

But already he had whipped out his pistol; and she fired instantly, smashing his right hand to pulp.

"You damned hell-cat!" he screamed, stretching out his shattered hand in an agony of impotent fury. Blood rained from it on the stone flags. Suddenly he started toward her.

"Don't stir!" she whispered. "Turn your back and raise both arms!"

His face became ghastly.

"Let me go, in God's name!" he burst out in a strangled voice. "Don't send me before a firing squad! Listen to me, little comrade—I surrender myself to your mercy——"

"Then keep away from me! Keep your distance!" she cried, retreating. He followed, fawning:

"Listen! We were such good comrades——"

"Don't come any nearer to me!" she called out sharply; but he still shuffled toward her, whimpering, drenched in blood, both hands uplifted.

"Kamerad!" he whined, "Kamerad—" and suddenly launched a kick at her.

She just avoided it, springing behind the bell Bayard; and he rushed at her and struck with both uplifted arms, showering her with blood, but not quite reaching her.

In the darkness among the beams and the deep shadows of the bells she could hear him hunting for her, breathing heavily and making ferocious, inarticulate noises, as she swung herself up onto the first beam above and continued to crawl upward.

"Where are you, little fool?" he cried at length. "I have business with you before I cut your throat—that smooth, white throat of yours that I kissed down there by the lavoir!" There was no sound from her.

He went back toward the stairs and began hunting about in the starlight for his pistol; but there was no parapet on the bell platform, and he probably concluded that it had fallen over the edge of the tower into the street.

Supporting his wounded hand, he stood glaring blankly about him, and his bloodshot eyes presently fell on the door to the stairs. But he must have realized that flight would be useless for him if he left this girl alive in her bell-tower, ready to alarm the town the moment he ran for the stairs.

With his left hand he fumbled under his tunic and disengaged a heavy trench knife from its sheath. The loss of blood was making his legs a trifle unsteady, but he pulled himself together and moved stealthily under the shadows of beam and bell until he came to the spot he selected. And there he lay down, the hilt of the knife in his left hand, the blade concealed by his opened tunic.

—————————

His heavy groans at last had their effect on the girl, who had climbed high up into the darkness, creeping from beam to beam and mounting from one tier of bells to another.

Standing on the lowest beam, she cautiously looked out through an oubliette and saw him lying on his back near the sheer edge of the roof.

Evidently he, also, could see her head silhouetted against the stars, for he called up to her in a plaintive voice that he was bleeding to death and unable to move.

After a few moments, opening his eyes again, he saw her standing on the roof beside him, looking down at him. And he whispered his appeal in the name of Christ. And in His name the little bell-mistress responded.

When she had used the blue kerchief at her neck for a tourniquet and had checked the hemorrhage, he was still patiently awaiting a better opportunity to employ his knife. It would not do to bungle the affair. And he thought he knew how it could be properly done—if he could get her head in the crook of his muscular elbow.

"Lift me, dear ministering angel," he whispered weakly.

She stooped impulsively, hesitated, then, suddenly terrified at the blazing ferocity in his eyes, she shrank back at the same instant that his broad knife flashed in her very face.

He was on his feet at a bound, and, as she raised her voice in a startled cry for help, he plunged heavily at her, but slipped and fell in his own blood. Then the clattering jingle of spurred boots on the stone stairs below caught his ear. He was trapped, and he realized it. He slowly got to his feet.

As Smith and Glenn appeared, springing out of the low-arched door, the muleteer Braun turned and faced them.

There was a silence, then Glenn said, bitterly:

"It's you, is it, you dirty Dutchman!"

"Hands up!" said Smith quietly. "Come on, now; it's a case of 'Kamerad' for yours."

Braun did not move to comply with the demand. Gradually it dawned on them that the man was game.

"Maryette!" he called; "where are you?"

Smith said curiously:

"What do you want with her, Braun?"

"I want to speak to her."

"Come over here, Maryette," said Glenn sullenly.

The girl crept out of the shadows. Her face was ghastly.

Braun looked at her with pallid scorn:

"You little, ignorant fool," he said, "I'd have made you a better lover than you'll ever have now!"

He shrugged his square shoulders in contempt, turned without a glance at Smith and Glenn, and stepped outward into space. And as he fell there between sky and earth, hurtling downward under the stars, Glenn's pistol flashed twice, killing his quarry in midair while falling.

"Can you beat it?" he demanded hoarsely, turning on Smith. "Ain't that me all over!—soft-hearted enough to do that skunk a kindness thataway!"

But his youthful voice was shaking, and he stared at the edge of the abyss, listening to the far tumult now arising from the street below.

"Did you shoot?" he inquired, controlling his nervous voice with an effort.

"Naw," said Smith disgustedly. "... Now, Maryette, put one arm around my neck, and me and the Kid will take you down them stairs, because you look tired—kind o' peeked and fussed, what with all this funny business going on——"

"Oh, Steek! Steek!" she sobbed. "Oh, mon ami, Steek!"

She began to cry bitterly. Smith picked her up in his arms.

"What you need is sleep," he said very gently.

But she shook her head: she had business to transact on her knees that night—business with the Mother of God that would take all night long—and many, many other sleepless nights; and many candles.

She put her left arm around Smith's neck and hid her tear-wet face on his shoulder. And, as he bore her out of the high tower and descended the unlighted, interminable stairs of stone, he heard her weeping against his breast and softly asking intercession in behalf of a dead young man who had tried to be to her a "Kamerad"—as he understood it—including the entire gamut, from amorous beast to fiend.

—————————

There was a single candle lighted in the bar of the White Doe. On the "zinc," side by side, like birds on a rail, sat the two muleteers. In each big, sunburnt fist was an empty glass; their spurred feet dangled; they leaned forward where they sat, hunched up over their knees, heads slightly turned, as though intently listening. A haze of cigarette smoke dimmed the candle flame.

The drone of an aeroplane high in the midnight sky came to them at intervals. At last the sound died away under the far stars.

By the smoky candle flame Kid Glenn unfolded and once more read the letter that kept them there:

—I ought to get to Sainte Lesse somewhere around midnight. Don't say a word to Maryette.

Jack.

Sticky Smith, reading over his shoulder, slowly rolled another cigarette.

"When Jack comes," he drawled, "it's a-goin' to he'p a lot. That Maryette girl's plumb done in."

"Sure she's done in," nodded Kid Glenn. "Wouldn't it do in anybody to shoot up a young man an' then see him step off the top of a skyscraper?"

Smith admitted that he himself had felt "kind er squeamish." He added: "Gawd, how he spread when he hit them flags! You didn't look at him, did you, Kid?"

"Naw. Say, d'ya think Maryette has gone to bed?"

"I dunno. When we left her up there in her room, I turned and took a peek to see she was comfy, but she was down onto both knees before that china virgin on the niche over her bed."

"She oughter be in bed. You gotta sleep off a thing like that, or you feel punk next day," remarked Glenn, meditatively twirling the last drops of eau-de-vie around in his tumbler. Then he swallowed them and smacked his lips. "She'll come around all O. K. when she sees Jack," he added.

"Goin' to let him wake her up?"

"Can you see us stoppin' him? He'd kick the pants off us——"

"Sh-h-h!" motioned Smith; "there's a automobile! By gum! It's stopped!——"

The two muleteers set their glasses on the bar, slid to the floor, and marched, clanking, into the covered way that led to the street. Smith undid the bolts. A young man stood outside in the starlight.

"Well, Jack Burley, you old son of a gun!" drawled Glenn. "Gawd! You look fit for a dead one!"

"We ain't told her!" whispered Smith. "She an' us done in a Fritz this evening, an' it sorter turned Maryette's stomach——"

"Not that she ain't well," explained Glenn hastily; "only a girl feels different. Stick an' me, we just took a few drinks, but Maryette, soon as she got home, she just flopped down on her knees and asked that china virgin of hers to go easy on that there Fritz——"

They had conducted Burley to the bar; both their arms were draped around his shoulders; both talked to him at the same time.

"This here Fritz," began Glenn—but Burley freed himself from their embrace.

"Where's Maryette?" he demanded.

Smith jerked a silent thumb toward the ceiling.

"In bed?"

"Or prayin'."

Burley flushed, hesitated.

"G'wan up, anyway," said Glenn. "I reckon it'll do her a heap o' good to lamp you, you old son of a gun!"

Burley turned, went up the short flight of stairs to her closed door. There was candle-light shining through the transom. He knocked with a trembling hand. There was no answer. He knocked again; heard her uncertain step; stepped back as her door opened.

The girl, a drooping figure in her night robe, stood listlessly on the threshold. Which of the muleteers it was who had come to her door she did not notice. She said:

"I am very tired. Death is a dreadful thing. I can't put it from my mind. I am trying to pray——"

She lifted her weary eyes and found herself looking into the face of her own lover. She turned very white, lovely eyes dilated.

"Is—is it thou, Djack?"

"C'est moi, ma ploo belle!"

She melted into his tightening arms with a faint cry. Very high overhead, under the lustrous stars, an aeroplane droned its uncharted way across a blood-soaked world.



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*Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford.* By George Randolph Chester. *Gilbert Neal.* By Will N. Harben. *Girl From His Town, The.* By Marie Van Vorst. *Girl of the Blue Ridge, A.* By Payne Erskine. *Girl Who Lived in the Woods, The.* By Marjorie Benton Cook. *Girl Who Won, The.* By Beth Ellis. *Glory of Clementina, The.* By Wm. J. Locke. *Glory of the Conquered, The.* By Susan Glaspell. *God's Country and the Woman.* By James Oliver Curwood. *God's Good Man.* By Marie Corelli. *Going Some.* By Rex Beach. *Gold Bag, The.* By Carolyn Wells. *Golden Slipper, The.* By Anna Katharine Green. *Golden Web, The.* By Anthony Partridge. *Gordon Craig.* By Randall Parrish. *Greater Love Hath No Man.* By Frank L. Packard. *Greyfriars Bobby.* By Eleanor Atkinson. *Guests of Hercules, The.* By C. N. & A. M. Williamson.

*Halcyone.* By Elinor Glyn. *Happy Island* (Sequel to Uncle William). By Jeannette Lee. *Havoc.* By E. Phillips Oppenheim. *Heart of Philura, The.* By Florence Kingsley. *Heart of the Desert, The.* By Honore Willsie. *Heart of the Hills, The.* By John Fox, Jr. *Heart of the Sunset.* By Rex Beach. *Heart of Thunder Mountain, The.* By Elfrid A. Bingham. *Heather-Moon, The.* By C. N. and A. M. Williamson. *Her Weight in Gold.* By Geo. B. McCutcheon. *Hidden Children, The.* By Robert W. Chambers. *Hoosier Volunteer, The.* By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles. *Hopalong Cassidy.* By Clarence E. Mulford. *How Leslie Loved.* By Anne Warner. *Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker.* By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D. *Husbands of Edith, The.* By George Barr McCutcheon

*I Conquered.* By Harold Titus. *Illustrious Prince, The.* By E. Phillips Oppenheim. *Idols.* By William J. Locke. *Indifference of Juliet, The.* By Grace S. Richmond. *Inez.* (Ill. Ed.) By Augusta J. Evans. *Infelice.* By Augusta Evans Wilson. *In Her Own Right.* By John Reed Scott. *Initials Only.* By Anna Katharine Green. *In Another Girl's Shoes.* By Berta Ruck. *Inner Law, The.* By Will N. Harben. *Innocent.* By Marie Corelli. *Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, The.* By Sax Rohmer. *In the Brooding Wild.* By Ridgwell Cullum. *Intrigues, The.* By Harold Bindloss. *Iron Trail, The.* By Rex Beach. *Iron Woman, The.* By Margaret Deland. *Ishmael.* (Ill.) By Mrs. Southworth.



BARBARIANS

BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

In this story Mr. Chambers deals with the early years of the Great War. Sickened by what seems to them at that time indifference on the part of the American Government, an odd group of men meet on the decks of a mule transport. They have been drawn to this common rendezvous by a desire to enter the war and purge their souls in the fight for the freedom of the world.

There are twelve in the group, eight Americans, three Frenchmen, and a Belgian, and prominent among them is Jim Neeland, whose earlier experiences Mr. Chambers has related in the "Dark Star."

Barbarians records the adventures of these men, not together, but singly or in groups, along the whole western battle front, from the Belgian coast to the mountains of Alsace. It is filled with unusual character sketches of the lives of the men in the Trenches, and of life in the little towns just inside the lines of Battle. Through it all there is great beauty and wonderful sense of justice and right that is indeed more precious than peace.

Other Books by Robert W. Chambers:

*Adventures of a Modest Man* *Alisa Paige* *Athalie* *Business of Life, The* *Cardigan* *Conspirators, The* *Fighting Chance, The* *Hidden Children, The* *Girl Phillippa, The* *Red Republic, The* *Dark Star, The* *Who Goes There?* *Younger Set, The* *Japonette* *Streets of Ascalon*

A. L. BURT COMPANY Publishers,—New York



THE NEWEST BOOKS

IN POPULAR REPRINT FICTION

Only Books of Superior Merit and Popularity are Published in this List

*TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR.* By Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The Tarzan books need no introduction. Thousands are waiting for this volume, being further adventures of TARZAN OF THE APES, and volume five of the series.

*LONG LIVE THE KING.* By Mary Roberts Rinehart.

This is a story of love, intrigue and adventure in a European court. In this story Mrs. Rinehart combines mystery, heart interest, and excitement of her past successes into a story that will be hailed as the most interesting of all her stories.

*WE CAN'T HAVE EVERYTHING.* By Rupert Hughes.

A novel of metropolitan life, of a girl who had never had anything and of a man who had always had everything, and of the manner in which his richness and her poverty colored each other, and the lives of many other persons as well.

*BARBARIANS.* By Robert W. Chambers.

Brave, reckless, idealistic chaps—careless of peril, unafraid of death—who deliberately sought danger and the venturesome life as found during the war, over there. The adventures will hold the reader breathless and the romance will delight.

*THE FORFEIT.* By Ridgwell Cullum.

A ranch story of Montana which centers around the fact that the leader of the "Lightfoot Rustlers" and the likeable but devil-may-care brother of the hero are one and the same. Cullum is a "big" western story writer.

*UNDER HANDICAP.* By Jackson Gregory.

Here is a story which is a strong picture of the changing of a western desert into a land of usefulness, by irrigation. The story has a pleasing romance, yet exciting at times, with adventures of more than one kind. Every reader of "The Outlaw" will want this book.

*THE TRIUMPH.* By Will N. Harben.

Loyalty is the keynote of this story, loyalty of the hero to his patriotic duty, loyalty of a daughter to her father, and loyalty of a lover to his sweetheart. The followers, of Mr. Harben will enjoy another of his southern stories.

*PIP.* By Ian Hay (Capt. Ian Hay Beith), Author of "The First Hundred Thousand."

A story of English school boys, their pleasures and pains, their sports and escapades, that might be called a modern "Tom Brown," but a Tom Brown brimming with laughter and with the slang of the day.

*MISS MILLION'S MAID.* By Berta Ruck.

Another ingenious Berta Ruck plot in which a high-spirited girl of twenty-three, well-bred, but penniless, flies in the face of tradition, becoming a maid of a newly-made heiress. So entangled grow the love affairs of mistress and maid that the reader has a merry time with the author in steering the girls on the road to happiness.

*ENOCH CRANE.* By F. Hopkinson and F. Berkeley Smith.

A story of New York specially. The scene is Waverly Place, in one of the characteristic old houses of that section. In this respect the story is very similar to "Peter," Mr. Smith's most popular book.

*PARTNERS OF THE NIGHT.* By Leroy Scott.

Although a detective story, it is one altogether different from those of the ordinary detective story writer. It is a story of the plain-clothes men and criminals of New York, with a splendid romance.

For sale by all booksellers.

A. L. BURT COMPANY, 114-120 East 23rd Street, New York

THE END