er had passed his sword through
his body. "On, camarades, on!" he cried; and, breaking fiercely past two
men who threw themselves in his way, he sped down the broad corridor in
the direction of the shouting.

A sharp turning, and then a second one, brought them to the head of a
short stair, from which they looked straight down upon the scene of the
uproar. A square oak-floored hall lay beneath them, from which opened
the doors of the principal guest-chambers. This hall was as light as
day, for torches burned in numerous sconces upon the walls, throwing
strange shadows from the tusked or antlered heads which ornamented them.
At the very foot of the stair, close to the open door of their chamber,
lay the seneschal and his wife: she with her head shorn from her
shoulders, he thrust through with a sharpened stake, which still
protruded from either side of his body. Three servants of the castle lay
dead beside them, all torn and draggled, as though a pack of wolves had
been upon them. In front of the central guest-chamber stood Du Guesclin
and Sir Nigel, half-clad and unarmored, with the mad joy of battle
gleaming in their eyes. Their heads were thrown back, their lips
compressed, their blood-stained swords poised over their right
shoulders, and their left feet thrown out. Three dead men lay huddled
together in front of them: while a fourth, with the blood squirting
from a severed vessel, lay back with updrawn knees, breathing in
wheezy gasps. Further back--all panting together, like the wind in a
tree--there stood a group of fierce, wild creatures, bare-armed and
bare-legged, gaunt, unshaven, with deep-set murderous eyes and wild
beast faces. With their flashing teeth, their bristling hair, their mad
leapings and screamings, they seemed to Alleyne more like fiends from
the pit than men of flesh and blood. Even as he looked, they broke
into a hoarse yell and dashed once more upon the two knights, hurling
themselves madly upon their sword-points; clutching, scrambling, biting,
tearing, careless of wounds if they could but drag the two soldiers to
earth. Sir Nigel was thrown down by the sheer weight of them, and Sir
Bertrand with his thunderous war-cry was swinging round his heavy sword
to clear a space for him to rise, when the whistle of two long English
arrows, and the rush of the squire and the two English archers down the
stairs, turned the tide of the combat. The assailants gave back, the
knights rushed forward, and in a