"To cross the river! Do you want to see what's on the other side?"

"Julien will be on the other side.... I have had a letter from him. I am
to dine in Chantilly. He will send a car at seven to wait for me in the
fields at the other side of the broken bridge, and trusts to me to find
a boat. Come over the level crossing to the river."

They passed the station hut and came to a little landing stage near
which a boat was tied.

"There's a boat," said Stewart. "Shall we ask at that hut?"

The wooden hut stood above their heads on a pedestal of stone; from its
side the haunch of the stone bridge sprang away into the air, but
stopped abruptly where it had been broken off. The hut, once perhaps a
toll-house, was on a level with what had been the height of the bridge,
and now it could be reached by stone steps which wound up to a small
platform in front of the door. From within came men's voices singing.

"Look in here!"

A flickering light issued from a small window, and having climbed the
steps they could see inside. Two boys, about sixteen, a soldier and an
old man, sat round a table beneath a hanging lamp, and sang from scraps
of paper which they held in their hands. Behind the old man a girl stood
cleaning a cup with a cloth.

"They are practising something. Knock!"