le," Garnache implored her softly. "Be brave,
child; try to be brave."

She sought to brace her flagging courage, and by an effort she averted
her eyes from that horrid heap and fixed them upon Garnache's calm,
intrepid face. The sight of his quietly watchful eyes, his grimly
smiling lips, seemed to infuse courage into her anew.

"I have the table, monsieur," she told him. "I can bring it no nearer to
the wall."

He understood that this was not because her courage or her strength
might be exhausted, but because he now occupied the spot where he had
bidden her place it. He motioned her away, and when she had moved he
darted suddenly and swiftly aside and caught the table, his sword still
fast in his two first fingers, which he had locked over the quillons.
He had pushed its massive weight halfway across the door before Fortunio
grasped the situation. Instantly the captain sought to take advantage of
it, thinking to catch Garnache unawares. But no sooner did he show his
nose inside the doorpost than Garnache's sword flashed before his eyes,
driving him back with a bloody furrow in his cheek.

"Have a care, Monsieur le Capitaine," Garnache mocked him. "Had you come
an inch farther it might have been the death of you."

A clatter of steps sounded upon the stairs, and the Parisian bent once
more to his task, and thrust the table across the open doorway. He had a
moment's respite now, for Fortunio stung--though lightly was not likely
to come again until he had others to support him. And while the others
came, while the hum of their voices rose higher, and finally their steps
clattered over the bare boards of the guard-room floor, Garnache had
caught up and flung a chair under the table to protect him from an
attack from below, while he had piled another on top to increase and
further strengthen the barricade.

Valerie watched him agonizedly, leaning now against the wall, her hands
pressed across her bosom, as if to keep down its tempestuous heaving.
Yet her anguish was tempered by a great wonder and a great admiration of
this man who could keep such calm eyes and such smiling lips in the face
of the dreadful odds by which he was beset, in the face of the certain
death that must ultimately reach him before he was many minutes older.
And in her imagination she conjured up a picture of him lying there torn
by their angry swords and drenched in blood, his life gone out of him,
his brave spirit, quenched for ever--and all fo