gly.

Over her shoulder she said with disdain:

"It is not a topic for conversation among the young, monsieur--what you
call _l'amour_." And she entered the kitchen, where he had not the
effrontery to follow her.

That evening, toward sunset, returning from the corral, he heard, high in
the blue sky above him, her bell-music drifting; and involuntarily
uncovering, he stood with bared head looking upward while the celestial
melody lasted.

And that evening, too, being the fete of Alincourt, a tiny neighbouring
village across the river, the bell-mistress went up into the tower after
dinner and played for an hour for the little neighbour hamlet across the
river Lesse.

All the people who remained in Sainte Lesse and in Alincourt brought out
their chairs and their knitting in the calm, fragrant evening air and
remained silent, sadly enraptured while the unseen player at her keyboard
aloft in the belfry above set her carillon music adrift under the summer
stars--golden harmonies that seemed born in the heavens from which they
floated; clear, exquisitely sweet miracles of melody filling the world of
darkness with magic messages of hope.

Those widowed or childless among her listeners for miles around in the
darkness wept quiet tears, less bitter and less hopeless for the divine
promise of the sky music which filled the night as subtly as the scent of
flowers saturates the dusk.

Burley, listening down by the corral, leaned against a post, one powerful
hand across his eyes, his cap clasped in the other, and in his heart the
birth of things ineffable.

For an hour the carillon played. Then old Bayard struck ten times. And
Burley thought of the trenches and wondered whether the mellow thunder of
the great bell was audible out there that night.

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 window at the