The fat brigadier drew bridle; Burley burst into French: "Esker--esker----" "_Oui_," nodded the brigadier, "that is where we are going." "Bong!" exclaimed Burley with satisfaction; and, turning to Sticky Smith: "Stick, tell the coons to hustle. We’re there!" Then, above the trampling, whip-cracking, and shouting of the negroes, from somewhere high in the blue sky overhead, out of limpid, cloudless heights floated a single bell-note, then another, another, others exquisitely sweet and clear, melting into a fragment of heavenly melody. Burley looked up into the sky; the negroes raised their sweating, dark faces in pleased astonishment; Stick and Kid Glenn lifted puzzled visages to the zenith. The fat brigadier smiled and waved his cigarette: "_Il est midi, messieurs._ That is the carillon of Sainte Lesse." The angelic melody died away. Then, high in the old bell-tower, a great resonant bell struck twelve times. Said the brigadier: "When the wind is right, they can hear our big bell, Bayard, out there in the first line trenches----" Again he waved his cigarette toward the northeast, then reined in his horse and backed off into the flowering meadow, while the first of the American mules entered the corral, the herd following pellmell. The American negroes went with the mules to a hut prepared for them inside the corral--it having been previously and carefully explained to France that an American mule without its negro complement was as galvanic and unaccountable as a beheaded chicken. Burley burst into French again, like a shrapnel shell: "Esker--esker----" "_Oui_," said the fat brigadier, "there is an excellent inn up the street, messieurs." And he saluted their uniform, the same being constructed of cotton khaki, with a horseshoe on the arm and an oxidized metal mule on the collar. The brigadier wondered at and admired the minute nicety of administrative detail characterizing a government which clothed even its muleteers so becomingly, yet with such modesty and dignity. He could not know that the uniform was unauthorized and the insignia an invention of Sticky Smith, aiming to counteract any social stigma that might blight his sojourn in France. "For," said Sticky Smith, before they went aboard the transport at New Orleans, "if you dress a man in khaki, with some gimcrack on his sleeve and collar, you’re level with anybody in Europe. Which," he added to Burley, "will make it pleasant if any emperors or kings drop in on us for a drink or a quiet game behind the lines." "Also," added Burley, "it goes with the ladies." And he and Kid Glenn purchased uniforms similar to Smith’s and had the horseshoe and mule fastened to sleeve and collar. "They’ll hang you fellows for francs-tireurs," remarked a battered soldier of fortune from the wharf as the transport cast off and glided gradually away from the sun-blistered docks. "Hang _who_?" demanded Burley loudly from the rail above. "What’s a frank-tiroor?" inquired Sticky Smith.