met the defenders of the chateau, carrying a wounded man in their
arms.

Antoinette uttered a cry of consternation.

"Ah! I would have fought until death!" exclaimed Philip, despairingly,
"but we were overpowered; the gate was torn down; my father was wounded.
He must be saved from the hands of the bandits at any cost, so we were
forced to retreat."

Antoinette walked on like one in a frightful dream. If Philip had not
supported her she would have fallen again and again. They walked beside
the Marquis, who was still conscious, though mortally wounded in the
breast. When he saw his son and Antoinette beside him, he looked at them
with sorrowful tenderness, and even attempted to smile as if to
convince them that he was not suffering.

The little band proceeded with all possible speed to a small
summer-house concealed in the pines and shrubbery. Nothing could be more
mournful than this little procession of gloomy-visaged men and weeping
women, fleeing through the darkness to escape the assassins who were now
masters of the castle, destroying everything around them and making
night hideous with their ferocious yells. At last they reached the
summer-house. The Marquis was deposited upon a hastily improvised bed;
the Abbe Peretty, assisted by Philip and Antoinette, attempted to dress
his wound; and two men started in the hope of reaching Remoulins by a
circuitous route, in order to bring a physician and call upon the
inhabitants of the village for aid.

An hour went by; it seemed a century. In the gloomy room where these
unfortunates had taken refuge no sound broke the stillness save the
moans of the Marquis and the voice of the Abbe Peretty, as he uttered
occasional words of consolation and encouragement to assuage the mute
anguish of Philip and the despair of the weeping Antoinette. Then all
was still again.

Philip's agony was terrible. His father dying; his home in the hands of
vandals, who were ruthlessly destroying the loved and cherished objects
that had surrounded him from infancy, Antoinette, crushed by the
disasters of this most wretched night, this was the terrible picture
that rose before him. To this torture was added the despair caused by a
sense of his utter powerlessness. Gladly would he have rushed back to
the chateau to die there, struggling with his enemies, but he was
prevented by the thought of Antoinette, who was now dependent upon him
for protection. He was engrossed in these gloomy thoughts whe