“It is no more than a false tower--a poor ornament on a poor church. There was never a place for a bell in it,” he answered. “Nobody, gentlemen, could gain access to that tower but a monkey or,” he laughed in a quiet way, “an aëroplane and the good English seem to have driven all the Boche aëroplanes away.” “But the light flashing in the steeple, padre?” insisted the British officer. “There are little colored panes of glass in the tower,” he answered readily enough, “put there to be of ornament when the light of sunrise and sunset should rest upon them. Might not the flares of your guns have flashed reflections from the panes?” The officer considered. He said to me afterward that he was quite convinced of the padre’s honesty, but thought that German spies might have made their way by rope ladders or some other fashion to the tower. He declared that it was more by force of habit than design that he asked the padre to remain until he and two of his men had investigated the matter. They weren’t long in finding out that the “padre” was a liar. They found a firm spiral iron stairway leading up into the tower and within commodious quarters where there were a heliograph, rockets and flash lamps of various sizes. Meanwhile the “padre” was telling the soldiers that he would go down the road a little way to his modest home and there await the officer. And the unsuspecting soldiers were about to accede to the request when the captain and his men returned from their investigations. The “padre” suddenly produced a pistol and it spat its fire twice in the darkness, wounding one soldier, but before he could fire again the soldier nearest jabbed him in the throat with his bayonet. We were to learn afterward that the real padre of the church had accompanied his flock in its exodus and though we never learned anything of our “padre,” it is certain, of course, he was no priest but an enemy spy. In the trenches before the battle of Moquet Farm we got the news of the capture and death of one of the boldest of spies that ever operated among us. This man had been for days familiarly about the trenches in the uniform of a British artillery officer. His English was as faultless as his manner affable and his monocle firm in his eye. I have never learned what led to his detection, but I witnessed his arrest and saw him ten minutes later led to execution--a brave man, I must confess, able to smile philosophically in the face of death and wearing his monocle as debonairly as ever.