Then he
reached up and scraped the stones with his finger nails in several places,
and then held his fingers close to the candlelight and looked at them and
smelled them. His fingers were black with soot.

"M. Paul, won't you speak to me?" begged the girl.

"Just a minute, just a minute," he answered absently. Then he spoke with
quick decision: "I'm going to set you to work," he said. "By the way, have
you any idea where we are?"

She looked at him in surprise. "Why, don't _you_ know?"

"I _think_ we are on the Rue de Varennes--a big _hotel_ back of the high
wall?"

"That's right," she said.

"Ah, he didn't take me away!" reflected M. Paul. "That is something.
Pougeot will scent danger and will move heaven and earth to save us. He
will get Tignol and Tignol knows I was here. But can they find us? Can they
find us? Tell me, did you come down many stairs?"

"Yes," she said, "quite a long flight; but won't you please----"

He cut her short, speaking kindly, but with authority.

"You mustn't ask questions, there isn't time. I may as well tell you our
lives are in danger. He's going to set fire to this wood and----"

"Oh!" she cried, her eyes starting with terror.

"See here," he said sharply. "You've got to help me. We have a chance yet.
The fire will start in this big chamber and--I want to cut it off by
blocking the passageway. Let's see!" He searched through his pockets. "He
has taken my knife. Ah, this will do!" and lifting a plate from the table
he broke it against the wall. "There! Take one of these pieces and see if
you can saw through the rope. Use the jagged edge--like this. That cuts it.
Try over there."

Alice fell to work eagerly, and in a few moments they had freed a section
of the wood piled in the smaller chamber from the restraining ropes and
stakes.

"Now then," directed Coquenil, "you carry the logs to me and I'll make a
barricade in the passageway."

The word passageway is somewhat misleading--there was really a distance of
only three feet between the two chambers, this being the thickness of the
massive stone wall that separated them. Half of this opening was already
filled by the wood pile, and Coquenil proceeded to fill up the other half,
laying logs on the floor, lengthwise, in the open part of the passage from
chamber to chamber, and then laying other logs on top of these, and so on
as rapidly as the girl brought wood.

They worked with all speed, Alice carrying the logs bravely, i