as not so light in this higher gallery, and for a while it was
almost impossible to make out their surroundings. But Jules had seen
something, and presently Henri, too, caught a fleeting vision of a
man's figure--a figure which stooped, and which crept along the farther
wall, perhaps some fifty feet from them. More than that, there came a
glimpse of the face of this individual on which a few scattered beams
of the torches, smoking and flaring down below, happened to fall.

"Max! That German scoundrel!" he whispered to Jules. "What's he up
to? Certainly not trying to make his escape. Let's close in on him."

They crept to the top of the stairs and along the gallery, their pulses
fluttering not a little. For intuitively they realized that they had a
struggle before them. And yet, judge of their disappointment, now that
they had reached this higher gallery, for to all appearance it was
empty. It was so dark up there that a man might have stood within ten
paces of them and not have been discovered, while any sound he made
would have been drowned quite easily. However, Henri pressed on
cautiously, bent almost double, one hand against the wall to guide him,
while Jules came immediately behind him, peering over his chum's
shoulder. Then, when they had covered perhaps twenty feet or more,
both suddenly stopped again--Henri so abruptly that Jules bumped into
him.

"There!" Jules heard him say in a hoarse whisper, "There! See him!
Watch him! What's he doing?"

Farther on, round an abrupt corner in the gallery, where it skirted the
large room down below filled with Breton soldiers, there was a strange
illumination, the source of light being uncertain. A moment or two
later both those young Frenchmen following the tracks of that sinister
German realized that a shaft led up from the room down below, and
either the room itself borrowed its light from the gallery which in
turn borrowed it from the embrasures and gun-emplacements on the
farther side, or the shaft was merely for ventilation purposes. In any
case, it was a wide affair, perhaps five feet square, and could the two
of them have peered down it they would have discovered that it sloped
steeply, and that, looking through it, they could see the happy fellows
down below still smoking heavily, still chatting and joking, waiting
patiently for the moment when their services would be called for.

And opposite that opening, peering through it, the upper part of his