"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: