eparted tip-tap! up the terrace in her
coquettish wooden shoes, leaving me alone with the Countess under the
trees.

"Madame," said I, "before I affix the government seals to the doors
of your house I must ask you to conduct me to the roof of the east
wing."

She bent her head in acquiescence; I followed her up the terrace into
a stone hall where the dark Flemish pictures stared back at me and my
spurred heels jingled in the silence. Up, up, and still up, winding
around a Gothic spiral, then through a passage under the battlements
and out across the slates, with wind and setting sun in my face and
the sighing tree-tops far below.

Without glancing at me the Countess walked to the edge of the leads
and looked down along the sheer declivity of the stone facade.
Slender, exquisite, she stood there, a lonely shape against the sky,
and I saw the sun glowing on her burnished red-gold hair, and her
sun-burned hands, half unclosed, hanging at her side.

South, north, and west the mountains towered, purple as the bloom on
October grapes; the white arm of the semaphore on the Pigeonnier was
tinted with rose color; green velvet clothed the world, under a silver
veil.

In the north a spark of white fire began to flicker on the crest of
Mount Tonnerre. It was the mirror of a heliograph flashing out across
leagues of gray-green hills to the rocky pulpit of the Pigeonnier.

I unslung my glasses and levelled them. The shining arm of the
semaphore fell to a horizontal position and remained rigid; down came
the signal flags, up went a red globe and two cones. Another string of
flags blossomed along the bellying halliards; the white star flashed
twice on Mount Tonnerre and went out.

Instantly I drew a flag from my pouch, tied it to the point of my
sabre, and stepped out along the projecting snout of a gargoyle.
Below, under my feet, the tree-tops rustled in the wind.

I had been flagging the Pigeonnier vigorously for ten minutes without
result, when suddenly a dark dot appeared on the tower beneath the
semaphore, then another. My glasses brought out two officers, one with
a flag; and, still watching them through the binoculars, I signalled
slowly, using my free hand: "This is La Trappe. Telegraph to
Morsbronn that the inspector of Imperial Police requires a peloton of
mounted gendarmes at once."

Then I sat down on the sun-warmed slates and waited, amusing myself by
watching the ever-changing display of signal flags on the di