portentous silence was followed by a loud knocking at
the front door, which din reverberated through the hall, echoing and
re-echoing the vigorous summons. Mauville at this leaned from the
window and as he did so, there arose a hooting from the sward as
though bedlam had broken loose. Maintaining his post, the heir called
out:

"What do you want, men?"

At these words the demonstration became more turbulent, and, amid the
threatening hubbub, voices arose, showing too well the purpose of the
gathering. Aroused to a fever of excitement by the shooting of the
tenants, they were no longer skulking, stealthy Indians, but a riotous
assemblage of anti-renters, expressing their determination in an
ominous chorus:

"Hang the land baron!"

In the midst of this far from reassuring uproar a voice arose like a
trumpet:

"We are the messengers of the Lord, made strong by His wrath!"

"You are the messenger of the devil, Little Thunder," Mauville shouted
derisively.

A crack of a rifle admonished the land baron that the jest might have
cost him dear.

CHAPTER XIV

THE ATTACK ON THE MANOR

After this brief hostile outbreak in the garden below the right wing,
Mauville prepared to make as effective defense as lay in his power and
looked around for his aid, the driver of the coach. But that quaking
individual had taken advantage of the excitement to disappear. Upon
hearing the threats, followed by the singing of bullets, and doubting
not the same treatment accorded the master would be meted out to the
servant, the coachman's fealty so oozed from him that he dropped his
blunderbuss, groping his way through the long halls to the cellar,
where he concealed himself in an out-of-the-way corner beneath a heap
of potato sacks. In that vast subterranean place he congratulated
himself he would escape with a whole skin, his only regret being
certain unpaid wages which he considered as good as lost, together
with the master who owed them.

Mauville, however, would have little regretted the disappearance of
this poor-spirited aid, on the theory a craven follower is worse than
none at all, had not this discovery been followed quickly by the
realization that the young girl, too, had availed herself of the
opportunity while he was at the window and vanished.

"Why, the slippery jade's gone!" he exclaimed, staring around the
room, confounded for the moment. Then recovering himself, he hurriedly
left the chamber, more apprehensiv