At a point where the passage widened, Henri stopped and lifted a finger.
On the other side of the walls there was a sound of many voices, an occasional peal of laughter, the clink of glass against glass, and every now and then merry snatches of song.
Henri felt along the side of the passage until his fingers touched a little knob about level with his eyes.
With a slight pressure on the knob a panel on the other side was controlled and began to slide noiselessly in polished grooves to the left.
Henri held the movement to an inch.
“Cast your eye in there,” speaking softly to Billy.
CHAPTER XX.
BEHIND CHÂTEAU PANELS.
The state dining-hall of the château was serving as the breakfast room of a French general and his numerous staff. If the uniforms worn had not indicated to what nation these soldiers belonged, the proof was surely in the fact that they jested and sang before breakfast. It takes a gay lot to be jolly before breakfast. After dinner anybody might have the notion to be merry.
How Château Trouville had escaped destruction by the big guns of the Germans might be accounted for by the fact that the aforesaid big guns had been mostly employed, when not turned loose on the trenches, in silencing French barrier forts. As a German battery lieutenant remarked, “only forts really counted.”