et and curiosity kept him standing where he fired, with the
pistol still smoking in his hand, till there came from the men clustered
round the body in the brake a loud simultaneous wail unfamiliar to his
ear, but unmistakable in its import. He turned and ran wildly for the
tower that had no aspect of sanctuary in it; his heart drummed noisily
at his breast; his mouth parched and gaped. Upon his lips in a little
dropped water; he tasted the salt of his sweating body. And then he knew
weariness, great weariness, that plucked at the sinews behind his knees,
and felt sore along the hips and back, the result of his days of hard
riding come suddenly to the surface. Truly he was not happy.

But if he ran wearily he ran well, better at least than his pursuers,
who had their own reasons for taking it more leisurely, and in a while
there was neither sight nor sound of the enemy.

He was beginning to get some satisfaction from this, when, turning
a bend of the path within two hundred yards of the castle, behold an
unmistakable enemy barred his way!--an ugly, hoggish, obese man, with
bare legs most grotesquely like pillars of granite, and a protuberant
paunch; but the devil must have been in his legs to carry him more
swiftly than thoroughbred limbs had borne Count Victor. He stood
sneering in the path, turning up the right sleeve of a soiled and ragged
saffron shirt with his left hand, the right being engaged most ominously
with a sword of a fashion that might well convince the Frenchman he had
some new methods of fence to encounter in a few minutes.

High and low looked Count Victor as he slacked his pace, seeking for
some way out of this sack, releasing as he did so the small sword from
the tanglement of his skirts, feeling the Mechlin deucedly in his way.
As he approached closer to the man barring his path he relapsed into
a walk and opened a parley in English that except for the slightest of
accents had nothing in it of France, where he had long been the comrade
of compatriots to this preposterous savage with the manners of medieval
Provence when footpads lived upon Damoiselle Picoree.

"My good fellow," said he airily, as one might open with a lackey,
"I protest I am in a hurry, for my presence makes itself much desired
elsewhere. I cannot comprehend why in Heaven's name so large a regiment
of you should turn out to one unfortunate traveller."

The fat man fondled the brawn of his sword-arm and seemed to gloat upon
the si