ised his eyes and saw the soldiers still
standing, irresolute and appalled at what they had done, and awe-struck
at the sight of the grief before them.

Clay gave a cry as terrible as the cry of a woman who has seen her
child mangled before her eyes, and lowering the body quickly to the
steps, he ran at the scattering mass below him. As he came they fled
down the corridor, shrieking and calling to their friends to throw open
the gates and begging them to admit the mob. When they reached the
outer porch they turned, encouraged by the touch of numbers, and halted
to fire at the man who still followed them.

Clay stopped, with a look in his eyes which no one who knew them had
ever seen there, and smiled with pleasure in knowing himself a master
in what he had to do. And at each report of his revolver one of
Stuart's assassins stumbled and pitched heavily forward on his face.
Then he turned and walked slowly back up the hall to the stairway like
a man moving in his sleep. He neither saw nor heard the bullets that
bit spitefully at the walls about him and rattled among the glass
pendants of the great chandeliers above his head. When he came to the
step on which the body lay he stooped and picked it up gently, and
holding it across his breast, strode on up the stairs. MacWilliams and
Langham were coming toward him, and saw the helpless figure in his arms.

"What is it?" they cried; "is he wounded, is he hurt?"

"He is dead," Clay answered, passing on with his burden. "Get Hope
away."

Madame Alvarez stood with the girl's arms about her, her eyes closed
and her figure trembling.

"Let me be!" she moaned. "Don't touch me; let me die. My God, what
have I to live for now?" She shook off Hope's supporting arm, and
stood before them, all her former courage gone, trembling and shivering
in agony. "I do not care what they do to me!" she cried. She tore her
lace mantilla from her shoulders and threw it on the floor. "I shall
not leave this place. He is dead. Why should I go? He is dead. They
have murdered him; he is dead."

"She is fainting," said Hope. Her voice was strained and hard.

To her brother she seemed to have grown suddenly much older, and he
looked to her to tell him what to do.

"Take hold of her," she said. "She will fall." The woman sank back
into the arms of the men, trembling and moaning feebly.

"Now carry her to the carriage," said Hope. "She has fainted; it is
better; she does not k