the
night. "Put her and the other prisoner in irons--quick!"

But while Marguerite expended her feeble strength in a mad, pathetic
effort to reach her husband, even now at this last hour, when all hope
was dead and Death was so nigh, Armand had already wrenched the carriage
door from the grasp of the soldier who was guarding it. He was of the
South, and knew the trick of charging an unsuspecting adversary with
head thrust forward like a bull inside a ring. Thus he knocked one of
the soldiers down and made a quick rush for the chapel gates.

The men, attacked so suddenly and in such complete darkness, did not
wait for orders. They closed in round Armand; one man drew his sabre and
hacked away with it in aimless rage.

But for the moment he evaded them all, pushing his way through them,
not heeding the blows that came on him from out the darkness. At last he
reached the chapel. With one bound he was at the gate, his numb fingers
fumbling for the lock, which he could not see.

It was a vigorous blow from Heron's fist that brought him at last to his
knees, and even then his hands did not relax their hold; they gripped
the ornamental scroll of the gate, shook the gate itself in its rusty
hinges, pushed and pulled with the unreasoning strength of despair.
He had a sabre cut across his brow, and the blood flowed in a warm,
trickling stream down his face. But of this he was unconscious; all that
he wanted, all that he was striving for with agonising heart-beats
and cracking sinews, was to get to his friend, who was lying in there
unconscious, abandoned--dead, perhaps.

"Curse you," struck Heron's voice close to his ear. "Cannot some of you
stop this raving maniac?"

Then it was that the heavy blow on his head caused him a sensation of
sickness, and he fell on his knees, still gripping the ironwork.

Stronger hands than his were forcing him to loosen his hold; blows that
hurt terribly rained on his numbed fingers; he felt himself dragged
away, carried like an inert mass further and further from that gate
which he would have given his lifeblood to force open.

And Marguerite heard all this from the inside of the coach where she was
imprisoned as effectually as was Percy's unconscious body inside that
dark chapel. She could hear the noise and scramble, and Heron's hoarse
commands, the swift sabre strokes as they cut through the air.

Already a trooper had clapped irons on her wrists, two others held the
carriage doors.