"Keed!" she said, going up to him and placing both hands on his broad shoulders; "I play the carillon after the angelus. Bring Steek to the bell-tower half an hour after you hear the carillon end. You will hear it end; you will hear the quarter hour strike presently. Half an hour later, after the third quarter hour strikes, you shall arrive. Bring pistols. Do you promise?" "Sure! What’s the row, Maryette?" "I don’t know yet. I _think_ we shall find a spy in the tower." "Where?" "In the belfry, _parbleu_! And you and Steek shall come up the stairs and you shall wait in the dark, there where the keyboard is, and where you see all the wires leading upward. You shall listen attentively, and I will be on the landing above, among my bells. And when you hear me cry out to you, then you shall come running with pistols!" "For heaven’s sake----" "Is it understood? Give me your word, Keed!" "Sure!----" "_Allons! Assez!_" she whispered excitedly. "Make prisoner any man you see there!--_any_ man! You understand?" "You bet!" "_Any man!_" she repeated slowly, "even if he wears the same uniform _you_ wear." There was a silence. Then: "By God!" said Glenn under his breath. "You suspect?" "Yes. And if it _is_ one of our German-American muleteers, we’ll lynch him!" he whispered in a white rage. But Maryette shook her head. "No," she said in a dull, even voice, "let the gendarmerie take him in charge. Spy or suspect, he must have his chance. That is the law in France." "You don’t give rats a chance, do you?" "I give everything its chance," she said simply. "And so does my country." She drew the automatic pistol from her holster, examined it, raised her eyes gravely to the American beside her: "This is terrible for me," she added, in a low but steady voice. "If it were not for my country--" She made a grave gesture, turned, and went slowly out through the arched stone passage into the main street of the town. A few minutes later the angelus sounded sweetly over the woods and meadows of Sainte Lesse. ------------------ At ten, as the last stroke of the hour ended, there came a charming, intimate little murmur of awakening bells; it grew sweeter, clearer, filling the starry sky, growing, exquisitely increasing in limpid, transparent volume, sweeping through the high, dim belfry like a great wind from Paradise carrying Heaven’s own music out over the darkened earth. All Sainte Lesse came to its doorways to listen to the playing of their beloved Carillonnette; the bell-music ebbed and swelled under the stars; the ancient Flemish masterpiece, written by some carillonneur whose bones had long been dust, became magnificently vital again under the enchanted hands of the little mistress of the bells. In fifteen minutes the carillon ended; a slight pause followed, then the quarter hour struck.