She was humming the tune, already following him note by note—she reached the place where the hymn ended, and ceased there, to wait until he began to play again from the second of the four windows. But the next second she realized to her vast amazement that Joseph had not stopped upon the broken note that came at the end of the Heynal, but had added a note or two, and brought the little hymn to an end in the way that pieces of music usually end.
Elzbietka sat upright on the bed, although she was quite certain that some trick had been played upon her by her senses. “Perhaps I was but half awake,” she thought. “I will listen more closely when he plays it the second time.”
He began to play from the south side. This time she did not hum the tune over but followed each note intently. When he had finished she realized that for the second time he had not stopped upon the broken note but had gone ahead with the additional notes which made the Heynal sound like a finished piece of music and not one that was broken off.
“He is playing it wrongly,” she repeated to herself.
He played next on the east side but the wind carried the sound away this time. When he came to the last window, the window on the north, the sound came clearly to Elzbietka’s ears. “This time I shall know,” she said.
At first she thought that he was going to stop upon the broken note, for he hesitated there, but then he went on ahead as if to say, “I know that I should stop here, but am not stopping,” and added the extra notes which finished the strain, just as the young trumpeter would probably have finished it had he not been shot down by the Tartar bowman.
Elzbietka was off the bed and on her feet. . . . He had played it in such fashion deliberately! Joseph was far too good a trumpeter to make the same mistake at least three times.
But what—what—could it mean? That Joseph was in some trouble? But there was the great alarm bell, which once sounded would rouse the town in an incredibly short time. This bell was always employed in times of fire, invasion, defense, and such various events as riots, the visit of a foreign king, the declaration of war——
He certainly would not trifle with such a sacred thing as the Heynal for a mere pastime—therefore, why, why, why, did he not ring the bell?