weet bell-note floated, another, others succeeding in crystalline
sweetness, linked in a fragment of some ancient melody. Then they ceased;
then came a brief silence; the great bell he had heard before struck five
times.

"Lord!--that's pretty," he murmured, moving on and turning into the arched
tunnel which was the entrance to the White Doe Inn.

Wandering at random, he encountered the innkeeper in the parlour, studying
a crumpled newspaper through horn-rimmed spectacles on his nose.

"Tray jolie," said Burley affably, seating himself with an idea of further
practice in French.

"_Plait-il?_"

"The bells--tray beau!"

The old man straightened his bent shoulders a little proudly.

"For thirty years, m'sieu, I have been Carillonneur of Sainte Lesse." He
smiled; then, saddened, he held out both hands toward Burley. The fingers
were stiff and crippled with rheumatism.

"No more," he said slowly; "the carillon is ended for me. The great art is
no more for Jean Courtray, Master of Bells."

"What is a carillon?" inquired John Burley simply.

Blank incredulity was succeeded by a shocked expression on the old man's
visage. After a silence, in mild and patient protest, he said:

"I am Jean Courtray, Carillonneur of Sainte Lesse.... Have you never heard
of the carillon of Sainte Lesse, or of me?"

"Never," said Burley. "We don't have anything like that in America."

The old carillonneur, Jean Courtray, began to speak in a low voice of his
art, his profession, and of the great carillon of forty-six bells in the
ancient tower of Sainte Lesse.

A carillon, he explained, is a company of fixed bells tuned according to
the chromatic scale and ranging through several octaves. These bells,
rising tier above tier in a belfry, the smallest highest, the great,
ponderous bells of the bass notes lowest, are not free to swing, but are
fixed to huge beams, and are sounded by clappers connected by a wilderness
of wires to a keyboard which is played upon by the bell-master or
carillonneur.

He explained that the office of bell-master was an ancient one and greatly
honoured; that the bell-master was also a member of the municipal
government; that his salary was a fixed one; that not only did he play
upon the carillon on fete days, market days, and particular occasions, but
he also travelled and gave concerts upon the few existing carillons of
other ancient towns and cities, not alone in France where carillons were
few, but in Bel