unoz! My husband! Fernando, where art thou? Oh, they have slain him,
and I only am to blame!"

She turned about and rushed back to the door, which she was about to
enter, when a cry far more sudden and terrible rang out behind her.

"_They have killed the Princess! Some one hath slain my darling!_"

At the word Rollo abandoned the man whom he was holding down, and with
shouts of "Cardono!" "El Sarria!" "To me! They are upon us!" he flung
himself outside.

There was little to be discerned clearly when he emerged into the cool
damp darkness, only a dim heap of writhing bodies as in some combat of
hounds or of the denizens of the midnight forest. But Rollo once and
again saw a flash of steel and a hand uplifted to strike. Without
waiting to think he gripped that which was topmost and therefore nearest
to him, and finding it unexpectedly light, he swung the thing clear by
the garment he had clutched. As he did so he felt a pain in his right
shoulder, which at the time appeared no more than the bite of a squirrel
or the sting of a bee. With one heave he threw the object, human or not
he could not for the moment determine, behind him into the blackness of
the hall.

"Take hold there, somebody!" he cried, for by this time he could hear
the clattering of the feet of his followers on the stairs and flagged
passages.

Outside under the stars something or some one larger and heavier lay on
the ground and moaned. As Rollo bent over it there came a rush of men
from all sides, and the young man had scarcely time to straighten
himself up and draw his pistol before he found himself attacked by half
a dozen men.

His pistol cracked and an assailant tumbled on his face, while the flash
in the pan revealed that he had already an ally. The Sergeant was beside
him, by what means did not then appear. For he had certainly not come
through the door, and at this Rollo drew a long breath and applied
himself to his sword-play with renewed vigour. The assailants, he soon
found, were mostly armed with long knives, which, however, had little
chance against the long and expert blades of the Sergeant and Rollo.

After proving on several occasions the deadly quality of these last,
they broke and ran this way and that, while from the windows above
(where the two royal servants were posted, with La Giralda on guard
between them), a scattering fire broke out, which tumbled more than one
of the fugitives upon the grass.

With great and grave ten