e 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. "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:

"_Il est midi, messieurs._ That is the carillon of Sainte Lesse."

The angelic melody died away. Then, high in the old bell-tower, a great
resonant bell struck twelve times.

Said the brigadier:

"When the wind is right, they can hear our big bell, Bayard, out there in
the first line trenches----"

Again he waved his cigarette toward the northeast, then reined in his
horse and backed off into the flowering meadow, while the first of the
American mules entered the corral, the herd following pellmell.

The American negroes went with the mules to a hut prepared for them inside
the corral--it having been previously and carefully explained to France
t