d 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 apparently
been removed by the retreating columns. There was little wreckage except
the burning debris 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 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 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, pla