and while we--Lossing and myself--took our
places at the door near the front, Jeffrys listened at the two rear
doors, to make sure of the location of his prey, and at a signal which
the guard below passed on to Dave we moved, each armed with a
dark-lantern, to the attack.

I could hear Lossing's breath close beside me as I carefully and
slowly tried the knob of the door and found that it yielded silently.

The house was an old one, and we saw as we slowly opened the door
that the lock was only a fragmentary one; there was on the other side
only a handle like that without. Holding our lanterns low we glided
in, and were half-way across the room when I raised the lantern and
turned its light carefully toward the bed, from whence long guttural
breathing told of a sleeper unconscious of our nearness. With lantern
in one hand and pistol in the other, I made a forward step as I saw by
the ray thrown across the bed the form and face of Delbras; and then,
suddenly, beneath my foot, something cracked and burst with a sharp
explosion.

Only a parlour match, but it brought the sleeper to a sitting posture,
and broad awake in a moment. He did not seem to so much as have seen
me, but his eyes and Lossing's appeared to meet and challenge each
other, and quicker than I can tell it he had bounded from his bed,
snatching something from under the pillow as he sprang--something that
glittered in his hand as he hurled himself upon Lossing, and the two
grappled and swayed, with the knife gleaming above their heads, held
thus by the strong hand of the English athlete.

As I sprang to place my lantern upon the table at the bed's head, that
it might help me to see and to aid Lossing, a shriek rang from the
room at the rear, and the next moment I saw the knife sent flying from
the hand of Delbras, and the two go down, still struggling. A moment I
watched them struggling there, and then somehow the villain wrenched
one hand free and gripped it with an awful clutch upon Lossing's
throat; the next there arose from below a succession of screeches that
might have issued from the throat of a bedlamite.

Once and again I had tried to interfere in Lossing's behalf, but the
effort seemed useless, until, as the screams from below ceased
suddenly, I sprang past the two, and, turning suddenly, struck at
Delbras with my clubbed pistol. I had aimed at the arm clutching at
my friend's throat, but a sudden movement brought the villain's head
in sharp co