CHAPTER II

MAROONED

"Will they do anything for us?" repeated Carfax.

The staff officer thought it very doubtful. He stood in the snow switching his wet puttees and looking out across a world of tumbled mountains. Over on his right lay Germany; on his left, France; Switzerland towered in ice behind him against an arctic blue sky.

It grew warm on the Falcon Peak, almost hot in the sun. Snow was melting on black heaps of rocks; a black salamander, swollen, horrible, stirred from its stiff lethargy and crawled away blindly across the snow.

"Our case is this," continued Carfax; "somebody's made a mistake. We've been forgotten. And if they don't relieve us rather soon[pg 8] some of us will go off our bally nuts. Do you get me, Major?"

"I beg your pardon——"

"Do you understand what I've been saying?"

"Oh, yes; quite so."

"Then ask yourself, Major, how long can four men stand it, cooped up here on this peak? A month, two months, three, five? But it's going on ten months—ten months of solitude—silence—not a sound, except when the snowslides go bellowing off into Alsace down there below our feet." His bronzed lip quivered. "I'll get aboard one if this keeps on."

He kicked a lump of ice off into space; the staff officer glanced at him and looked away hurriedly.

"Listen," said Carfax with an effort; "we're not regulars—not like the others. The Canadian division is different. Its discipline is different—in spite of Salisbury Plain and K. of K. In my regiment there are half-breeds, pelt-hunters, Nome miners, Yankees of all degrees, British, Canadians, gentlemen[pg 9] adventurers from Cosmopolis. They're good soldiers, but do you think they'd stay here? It is so in the Athabasca Battalion; it is the same in every battalion. They wouldn't stay here ten months. They couldn't. We are free people; we can't stand indefinite caging; we've got to have walking room once every few months."

The staff officer murmured something.

"I know; but good God, man! Four of us have been on this peak for nearly ten months. We've never seen a Boche, never heard a shot. Seasons come and go, rain falls, snow falls, the winds blow from the Alps, but nothing else comes to us except a half-frozen bird or two."

The staff officer looked about him with an involuntary shiver. There was nothing to see except the sun on the wet, black rocks and the whitewashed observation station of solid stone from which wires sagged into the valley on the French side.

"Well—good luck," he said hastily, looking as embarrassed as he felt. "I'll be toddling along."

CHAPTER III

CUCKOO!

Carfax, on duty, sat hunched up over the telephone, reporting to the fortress.

Gray came in, closed the wooden shutters, hung blankets over them, lighted an oil stove and then a candle. Flint took up the cards, looked at Gary, then flung them aside, muttering.

Nobody attempted to read; nobody touched the cards again. An orderly came in with soup. The meal was brief and perfectly silent.

Flint said casually, after the table had been cleared: "I haven't slept for a month. If I don't get some sleep I'll go queer. I warn you; that's all. I'm sorry to say it, but it's so."

"They're dirty beasts to keep us here like[pg 21] this," muttered Gary—"nine months of it, and not a shot."

"There'll be a few shots if things don't change," remarked Flint in a colourless voice. "I'm getting wrong in my head. I can feel it."

Carfax turned from the switchboard with a forced laugh: "Thinking of shooting up the camp?"

"That or myself," replied Flint in a quiet voice; "ever since that cuckoo called I've felt queer."

Gary, brooding in his soiled tunic collar, began to mutter presently: "I once knew a man in a lighthouse down in Florida who couldn't stand it after a bit and jumped off."

"Oh, we've heard that twenty times," interrupted Carfax wearily.

Gray said: "What a jump!—I mean down into Alsace below——"

"You're all going dotty!" snapped Carfax. "Shut up or you'll be doing it—some of you."

"I can't sleep. That's where I'm getting queer," insisted Flint. "If I could get a few hours' sleep now——"

CHAPTER IV

RECONNAISSANCE

And that was the way Carfax ended—a tiny tragedy of incompetence compared to the mountainous official fiasco at Gallipoli. Here, a few perished among the filthy salamanders in the snow; there, thousands died in the burning Turkish gorse——

But that's history; and its makers are already officially damned.

But now concerning two others of the fed-up dozen on board the mule transport—Harry Stent and Jim Brown. Destiny linked arms with them; Fate jerked a mysterious thumb over her shoulder toward Italy. Chance detailed them for special duty as soon as they landed.

It was a magnificent sight, the disembark[pg 34]ing of the British overseas military force sent secretly into Italy.

They continued to disembark and entrain at night. Nobody knew that British troops were in Italy.

The infernal uproar along the Isonzo never ceased; the din of the guns resounded through the Trentino, but British and Canadian noses were sniffing at something beyond the Carnic Alps, along the slopes of which they continued to concentrate, Rifles, Kilties, and Gunners.

There seemed to be no particular hurry. Details from the Canadian contingent were constantly sent out to familiarize themselves with the vast waste of tunneled mountains denting the Austrian sky-line to the northward; and all day long Dominion reconnoitering parties wandered among valleys, alms, forest, and peaks in company sometimes with Italian alpinists, sometimes by themselves, prying, poking, snooping about with all the emotionless pertinacity of Teuton tourists preoccupied with wanderlust, kultur, and ewigkeit.

CHAPTER VI

IN FINISTÈRE

It was a dirty trick that they played Stent and Brown—the three Mysterious Sisters, Fate, Chance, and Destiny. But they're always billed for any performance, be it vaudeville or tragedy; and there's no use hissing them off: they'll dog you from the stage entrance if they take a fancy to you.

They dogged Wayland from the dock at Calais, where the mule transport landed, all the way to Paris, then on a slow train to QuimperlÉ, and then, by stagecoach, to that little lost house on the moors, where ties held him most closely—where all he cared for in this world was gathered under a humble roof.

In spite of his lameness he went duck-shooting the week after his arrival. It was rather forcing his convalescence, but he believed it[pg 65] would accelerate it to go about in the open air, as though there were nothing the matter with his shattered leg.

So he hobbled down to the point he knew so well. He had longed for the sea off Eryx. It thundered at his feet.

And, now, all around him through clamorous obscurity a watery light glimmered; it edged the low-driven clouds hurrying in from the sea; it outlined the long point of rocks thrust southward into the smoking smother.

The din of the surf filled his ears; through flying patches of mist he caught glimpses of rollers bursting white against the reef; heard duller detonations along unseen sands, and shattering reports where heavy waves exploded among basalt rocks.

His lean face of an invalid glistened with spray; salt water dripped from cap and coat, spangled the brown barrels of his fowling-piece, and ran down the varnished supports of both crutches where he leaned on them, braced forward against an ever-rising wind.

At moments he seemed to catch glimpses of darker specks dotting the heaving flank of some[pg 66] huge wave. But it was not until the wild ducks rose through the phantom light and came whirring in from the sea that his gun, poked stiffly skyward, flashed in the pallid void. And then, sometimes, he hobbled back after the dead quarry while it still drove headlong inland, slanting earthward before the gale.

Once, amid the endless thundering, in the turbulent desolation around him, through the roar of wind in his ears, he seemed to catch deadened sounds resembling distant seaward cannonading—real cannonading—as though individual shots, dully distinct, dominated for a few moments the unbroken uproar of surf and gale.

He listened, straining his ears, alert, intent upon the sounds he ought to recognize—the sounds he knew so well.

Only the ceaseless pounding of the sea assailed his ears.

Three wild duck, widgeon, came speeding through the fog; he breasted the wind, balanced heavily on both crutches and one leg, and shoved his gun upward.

At the same instant the mist in front and[pg 67] overhead became noisy with wild fowl, rising in one great, panic-stricken, clamoring cloud. He hesitated; a muffled, thudding sound came to him over the unseen sea, growing louder, nearer, dominating the gale, increasing to a rattling clatter.

Suddenly a great cloudy shape loomed up through the whirling mist ahead—an enormous shadow in the fog—a gigantic spectre rushing inland on vast and ghostly pinions.

As the man shrank on his crutches, looking up, the aËroplane swept past overhead—a wounded, wavering, unsteady, unbalanced thing, its right aileron dangling, half stripped, and almost mangled to a skeleton.

Already it was slanting lower toward the forest like a hard-hit duck, wing-crippled, fighting desperately for flight-power to the very end. Then the inland mist engulfed it.

And after it hobbled Wayland, painfully, two brace of dead ducks and his slung fowling piece bobbing on his back, his rubber-shod crutches groping and probing among drenched rocks and gullies full of kelp, his left leg in splints hanging heavily.

CHAPTER VII

THE AIRMAN

She had seated herself on a stool by the hearth. Presently she spread her apron with trembling fingers, took the glazed bowl of soup upon her lap and began to eat, slowly, casting long, unquiet glances at him from time to time where he still at table leaned heavily, looking out into the rain.

When he caught her eye he smiled, summoning her with a nod of his boyish head. She set aside her bowl obediently, and, rising, brought him his crutches. And at the same moment somebody knocked lightly on the outer door.

Marie-Josephine had unpinned her coiffe. Now she pinned it on over her bonnet before going to the door, glancing uneasily around at him while she tied her tresses and settled[pg 79] the delicate starched wings of her bonnet.

"That's odd," he said, "that knocking," staring at the door. "Perhaps it is the lost Englishman."

"God send them," she whispered, going to the door and opening it.

It certainly seemed to be one of the lost Englishmen—a big, square-shouldered, blond young fellow, tall and powerful, in the leather dress of an aËronaut. His glass mask was lifted like the visor of a tilting helmet, disclosing a red, weather-beaten face, wet with rain. Strength, youth, rugged health was their first impression of this leather-clad man from the clouds.

He stepped inside the house immediately, halted when he caught sight of Wayland in his undress uniform, glanced involuntarily at his crutches and bandaged leg, cast a quick, penetrating glance right and left; then he spoke pleasantly in his hesitating, imperfect French—so oddly imperfect that Wayland could not understand him at all.

"Who are you?" he demanded in English.

The airman seemed astonished for an in[pg 80]stant, then a quick smile broke out on his ruddy features:

"I say, this is lucky! Fancy finding an Englishman here!—wherever this place may be." He laughed. "Of course I know I'm 'somewhere in France,' as the censor has it, but I'm hanged if I know where!"

"Come in and shut the door," said Wayland, reassured. Marie-Josephine closed the door. The aËronaut came forward, stood dripping a moment, then took the chair to which Wayland pointed, seating himself as though a trifle tired.

"Shot down," he explained, gaily. "An enemy submarine winged us out yonder somewhere. I tramped over these bally moors for hours before I found a sign of any path. A sheepwalk brought me here."

"You are lucky. There is only one house on these moors—this! Who are you?" asked Wayland.

"West—flight-lieutenant, 10th division, Cinque-Ports patrolling squadron."

"Good heavens, man! What are you doing in FinistÈre?"

CHAPTER IX

L'OMBRE

Aulnes Woods were brown and still under their unshed canopy of October leaves. Against a grey, transparent sky the oaks and beeches towered, unstirred by any wind; in the subdued light among the trees, ferns, startlingly green, spread delicate plumed fronds; there was no sound except the soft crash of his own footsteps through shriveling patches of brake; no movement save when a yellow leaf fluttered down from above or one of those little silvery grey moths took wing and fluttered aimlessly along the forest aisle, only to alight upon some lichen-spotted tree and cling there, slowly waving its delicate, translucent wings.

It was a very ancient wood, the Forest of Aulnes, and the old trees were long past[pg 98] timber value. Even those gleaners of dead wood and fallen branches seemed to have passed a different way, for the forest floor was littered with material that seldom goes to waste in Europe, and which broke under foot with a dull, thick sound, filling the nostrils with the acrid odour of decay.

Narrow paths full of dead leaves ran here and there through the woods, but he took none of these, keeping straight on toward the northwest until a high, moss-grown wall checked his progress.

It ran west through the silent forest; damp green mould and lichens stained it; patches of grey stucco had peeled from it, revealing underneath the roughly dressed stones. He followed the wall.

Now and then, far in the forest, and indistinctly, he heard faint sounds—perhaps the cautious tread of roebuck, or rabbits in the bracken, or the patter of a stoat over dry leaves; perhaps the sullen retirement of some wild boar, winding man in the depths of his own domain, and sulkily conceding him right of way.

CHAPTER X

THE GHOULS

They dined by the latticed window; two candles lighted them; old Anne served them—old Anne of FÄouette in her wide white coiffe and collarette, her velvet bodice and her chaussons broidered with the rose.

Always she talked as she moved about with dish and salver—garrulous, deaf, and aged, and perhaps flushed with the gentle afterglow of that second infancy which comes before the night.

"Ouidame! It is I, Anne Le Bihan, who tell you this, my pretty gentleman. I have lived through eighty years and I have seen life begin and end in the Woods of Aulnes—alas!—in the Woods and the House of Aulnes——"

"The red wine, Anne," said her mistress, gently.

CHAPTER XI

THE SEED OF DEATH

It was Dr. Vail whose identification secured burial for Neeland, not in the American cemetery, but in Aulnes Wood.

When the raid into FinistÈre ended, and the unclean birds took flight, Vail, at Quimper, ordered north with his unit, heard of the tragedy, and went to Aulnes. And so Neeland was properly buried beside the youthful chÂtelaine. Which was, no doubt, what his severed soul desired. And perhaps hers desired it, too.

Vail continued on to Paris, to Flanders, got gassed, and came back to New York.

He had aged ten years in as many months.

Gray, the younger surgeon, kept glancing from time to time at Vail's pallid face, and the latter understood the professional interest of the younger man.

CHAPTER XIII

MULETEERS

Lying far to the southwest of the battle line, only when a strong northwest wind blew could Sainte Lesse hear the thudding of cannon beyond the horizon. And once, when the northeast wind had blown steadily for a week, on the wings of the driving drizzle had come a faint but dreadful odour which hung among the streets and lanes until the wind changed.

Except for the carillon, nothing louder than the call of a cuckoo, the lowing of cattle or a goatherd's piping ever broke the summer silence in the little town. Birds sang; a shallow river rippled; breezes ruffled green grain into long, silvery waves across the valley; sunshine fell on quiet streets, on scented gardens unsoiled by war, on groves and[pg 160] meadows, and on the stone-edged brink of brimming pools where washerwomen knelt among the wild flowers, splashing amid floating pyramids of snowy suds.

And into the exquisite peace of this little paradise rode John Burley with a thousand American mules.

The town had been warned of this impending visitation; had watched preparations for it during April and May when a corral was erected down in a meadow and some huts and stables were put up among the groves of poplar and sycamore, and a small barracks was built to accommodate the negro guardians of the mules and a peloton of gendarmes under a fat brigadier.

Sainte Lesse as yet knew nothing personally of the American mule or of Burley. Sainte Lesse heard both before it beheld either—Burley's loud, careless, swaggering voice above the hee-haw of his trampling herds:

"All I ask for is human food, Smith—not luxuries—just food!—and that of the commonest kind."

And now an immense volume of noise and[pg 161] dust enveloped the main street of Sainte Lesse, stilling the quiet noon gossip of the town, silencing the birds, awing the town dogs so that their impending barking died to amazed gurgles drowned in the din of the mules.

Astride a cream-coloured, wall-eyed mule, erect in his saddle, talkative, gesticulating, good-humoured, famished but gay, rode Burley at the head of the column, his reckless grey eyes glancing amiably right and left at the good people of Sainte Lesse who clustered silently at their doorways under the trees to observe the passing of this noisy, unfamiliar procession.

Mules, dust; mules, dust, and then more mules, all enveloped in dust, clattering, ambling, trotting, bucking, shying, kicking, halting, backing; and here and there an American negro cracking a long snake whip with strange, aboriginal ejaculations; and three white men in khaki riding beside the trampling column, smoking cigarettes.

"Sticky" Smith and "Kid" Glenn rode mules on the column's flank; Burley continued[pg 162] to lead on his wall-eyed animal, preceded now by the fat brigadier of the gendarmerie, upon whom he had bestowed a cigarette.

Burley, talking all the while from his saddle to whoever cared to listen, or to himself if nobody cared to listen, rode on in the van under the ancient bell-tower of Sainte Lesse, where a slim, dark-eyed girl looked up at him as he passed, a faint smile hovering on her lips.

"Bong jour, Mademoiselle," continued Burley, saluting her en passant with two fingers at the vizor of his khaki cap, as he had seen British officers salute. "I compliment you on your silent but eloquent welcome to me, my comrades, my coons, and my mules. Your charming though slightly melancholy smile bids us indeed welcome to your fair city. I thank you; I thank all the inhabitants for this unprecedented ovation. Doubtless a municipal banquet awaits us——"

Sticky Smith spurred up.

"Did you see the inn?" he asked. "There it is, to the right."

"It looks good to me," said Burley.[pg 163] "Everything looks good to me except these accursed mules. Thank God, that seems to be the corral—down in the meadow there, Brigadeer!"

The fat brigadier drew bridle; Burley burst into French:

"Esker—esker——"

"Oui," nodded the brigadier, "that is where we are going."

"Bong!" exclaimed Burley with satisfaction; and, turning to Sticky Smith: "Stick, tell the coons to hustle. We're there!"

Then, above the trampling, whip-cracking, and shouting of the negroes, from somewhere high in the blue sky overhead, out of limpid, cloudless heights floated a single bell-note, then another, another, others exquisitely sweet and clear, melting into a fragment of heavenly melody.

Burley looked up into the sky; the negroes raised their sweating, dark faces in pleased astonishment; Stick and Kid Glenn lifted puzzled visages to the zenith. The fat brigadier smiled and waved his cigarette:

CHAPTER XIV

LA PLOO BELLE

They had been nearly three weeks on the voyage, three days in port, four more on cattle trains, and had been marching since morning from the nearest railway station at Estville-sur-Lesse.

Now, lugging their large leather hold-alls, they started up the main street of Sainte Lesse, three sunburnt, loud-talking Americans, young, sturdy, careless of glance and voice and gesture, perfectly self-satisfied.

Their footsteps echoed loudly on the pavement of this still, old town, lying so quietly in the shadow of its aged trees and its sixteenth century belfry, where the great bell, Bayard, had hung for hundreds of years, and, tier on tier above it, clustered in set ranks the fixed bells of the ancient carillon.

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 win[pg 192]dow 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 rÈgle?" demanded Burley.

"Parfaitement, mon ami."

"Will they take me as far as Nivelle?"

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

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[pg 205] 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[pg 206] 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."[pg 207]

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

Her tear-filled eyes widened:

"Oh, no," she said naÏvely; "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[pg 208] 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 to[pg 209]gether, 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.[pg 210]

"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.[pg 212]

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:[pg 213]

"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 ma[pg 214]chine 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[pg 215] 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.[pg 216]

"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 BrabanÇonne" 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.[pg 217]

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."[pg 218]

"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 BrabanÇonne." 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[pg 219] 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 BrabanÇonne.' If not that, then the tocsin on the great bell, Clovis."

In the tiny cafÉ the crippled innkeeper sat, his aged, wistful eyes watching three leather-[pg 220]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 cafÉ, 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.[pg 221]

"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[pg 222] 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 BrabanÇonne" 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."[pg 223]

"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[pg 224] 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[pg 225] 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 XX

"LA BRABANÇONNE"

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 dÉbris 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 appar[pg 240]ently been removed by the retreating columns. There was little wreckage except the burning dÉbris 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[pg 241] 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[pg 242] 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[pg 243] 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[pg 244] 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 BrabanÇonne.' That is the signal to our trenches."

"I have often played it," she said coolly.[pg 245]

"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[pg 246] 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[pg 247] 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 BrabanÇonne'?"[pg 248]

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 BrabanÇonne' 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 BrabanÇonne' 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 faÇades[pg 249] on either side of the street, shadowy forms came gliding forward.

They passed the glowing embers and went on toward Sainte-Lesse; jÄgers, 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.[pg 250]

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[pg 251] 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.[pg 252]

"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.[pg 253] 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[pg 254] 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[pg 255] 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 coÖrdination 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.[pg 256]

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 BrabanÇonne!" 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 BrabanÇonne!"

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[pg 257] 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[pg 258] 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[pg 259] 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.[pg 260]

"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 BrabanÇonne! 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,[pg 261] 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 BrabanÇonne."

CHAPTER XXII

THE SUSPECT

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

She had been writing in the deserted cafÉ. Now she took a candle and went slowly up[pg 278]stairs. 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[pg 279] eyes glimmered at the base of the antennÆ—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[pg 280] 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 pupÆ of the Death's Head were making merry in anticipation of the rapidly approach[pg 281]ing 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 pupÆ 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 cafÉ.

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[pg 282] 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,[pg 283] 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——"[pg 284]

"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[pg 285] 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 antennÆ; 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 fune[pg 286]real 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 antennÆ.

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, driv[pg 287]ing 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[pg 288] 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[pg 289] 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[pg 290] 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[pg 291] 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 pa[pg 292]tient, 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 cafÉ door. The girl rose wearily; an immense weight seemed to crush her shoulders so that her knees had become unsteady.

She opened the cafÉ door; it was Sticky Smith, come for his nightcap before turning in.[pg 293]

"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."

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[pg 294] 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 cele[pg 296]brated 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. GlÜck, for a forced hatching of the pupÆ 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 pupÆ could not have died. Where, then, was his error—if, indeed, he had made any?

Leaning from the window, he looked down[pg 297] 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?[pg 298]

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.[pg 299]

A low murmur of voices came from the cafÉ.

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 cafÉ 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[pg 300] 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[pg 301] 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 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[pg 324] 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[pg 325] 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[pg 326] 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:[pg 327]

"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.[pg 328]

"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[pg 329] 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 bÊte 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[pg 330] 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."[pg 331]

"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?"[pg 332]

"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 un[pg 333]steady 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[pg 334] 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?"[pg 335]

"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[pg 336] 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 naÏvely.

"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[pg 337] 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.[pg 338]

"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[pg 339] 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?"[pg 340]

"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 Carillon[pg 341]nette; 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[pg 342] 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[pg 343] 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.[pg 344]

"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 mak[pg 345]ing 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[pg 346] 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[pg 347] 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[pg 348] 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[pg 349]!—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.[pg 350]

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 aËroplane 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 un[pg 351]folded and once more read the letter that kept them there:

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."[pg 352]

"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[pg 353] 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 aËroplane droned its uncharted way across a blood-soaked world.

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:

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.

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