rom the rear his sky-guns hurled
shrapnel at the carillon in the belfry of Nivelle.

Clouds possessed the tower--soft, white, fleecy clouds rolling, unfolding,
floating about the ancient buttresses and gargoyles. An iron hail rained
on slate and parapet and resounding bell-metal. But the bells pealed and
pealed in clear-voiced beauty, and Clovis, the great iron giant, hung,
scarcely sonorous under the shrapnel rain.

Suddenly there were bayonets on the stairs--the clatter of heavy
feet--alien faces on the threshold. Then a bomb flew, and the terrible
crash cleared the stairs.

Twice more the clatter came with the clank of bayonets and guttural cries;
but both died out in the infernal roar of the grenades exploding inside
that stony spiral. And no more bayonets flickered on the stairs.

The airman, frozen to a statue, listened. Again and again he thought he
could hear bugles, but the roar from below blotted out the distant call.

"Little bell-mistress!"

She turned her head, her hands still striking the keyboard. He spoke
through the confusion of the place:

"Sound the tocsin!"

Then Clovis thundered from the belfry like a great gun fired, booming out
over the world. Around the iron colossus shrapnel swept in gusts; Clovis
thundered on, annihilating all sound except his own tremendous voice,
heedless of shell and bullet, disdainful of the hell's shambles below,
where masked French infantry were already leaping the parapets of Nivelle
Redoubt into the squirming masses below.

The airman shouted at her through the tumult:

"They murdered my brother. Did I tell you? They hacked him to slivers with
their bayonets. I've settled the reckoning down in the gas there--their
own green gas, damn them! You don't understand what I say, do you? He was
my brother----"

A frightful explosion blew in the oubliette; the room rattled and
clattered with shrapnel.

The airman swayed where he stood in the swirling smoke, lurched up against
the stone coping, slid down to his knees.

When his eyes opened the little bell-mistress was bending over him.

"They got me," he gasped. All the front of his tunic was sopping red.

"They said it meant the cross--if I made good.... Are you hurt?"

"Oh, no!" she whispered. "But you----"

"Go on and play!" he whispered with a terrible effort.

"But you----"

"The Brabanconne! Quick!"

She went, whimpering. Standing before the keyboard she pulled on her
wooden gloves and struck the ke