e to burn the
documents.

"And if he does not give them up?"

"We must cut off his head and burn down his chateau. We are sorry, but
it is the King's order."

Dominique, in reporting, made no suggestions; instead, he waited for
instructions. Lecour thought a moment. He came to the conclusion to try
severity. "Tell them," said he, "that unless they are quiet I will make
parchments of their skins."

Cyrene caught his arm, but the answer had already gone.

Dominique dropped the _role_ of butler for his old ones of soldier. He
saluted, and marched down to deliver the message. A hush was heard for a
few moments, then the entrance door slammed, and an instant after all
the windows in the mansion seemed to shatter simultaneously before a
tremendous volley of musketry and stones. Every wall and casement shook
with the shouts and racketing sounds of a fierce and general attack.

Germain and Cyrene shuddered. The noise awoke them to the seriousness of
the situation. It brought them face to face with that terrible storm
whose thunderclouds were now thickly darkening over France--the
death-dealing typhoon of the Revolution. A proud thought came into his
head. "My time is come. I shall die defending her."

"Do you and all the servants save yourselves," he said to Dominique. And
he took two pistols from the drawer and laid them on the table, looking
into Cyrene's eyes.

"No, my master," Dominique returned, "if you die, I will die with you.
I know my duty. But let us at least defend ourselves well."

"See that the others escape, and especially the women. It is not right
for them, who are from the country here, to be embroiled with their
relatives. Tell them on no account to open the outer doors, or they run
the risk of massacre, but to make terms through their friends in the
mob."

It was only a question of minutes when the besiegers should succeed in
breaking a door or scaling the walls to the windows and making their
entrance. From the office windows they could see a score of those in the
rear running forward across the grounds with a ladder which they had
secured in the stables. Passing again to the front of the house, Lecour
saw the mob angrily tearing up garden benches and summerhouses for the
same purpose. An active crowd besides, under the urging of Cliquet, was
battering the main door with a beam. The fire, lit for his parchments
was blazing merrily, and a man with a shock of matted hair, by a sudden
impulse snatc