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 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 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 to lead on his wall-eyed animal, preceded now by the fat
brigadier of the gendarmerie, upon whom h