the gaps in the broken roof to enable me to see about me. The
place was like a shambles round the spot where we had taken our stand;
there were five or six bodies, besides the president, whom I had shot at
first. It was his corpse I had stumbled over, so he had his revenge in a
way.

I found myself wondering idly how long it would be before they would
search the chapel, and if it would be worth while to try and get out by
the door through which Loris had come and gone; but, though I made a
feeble effort to get on my feet, it was no good. I was as weak as an
infant. I discovered then that I was soaked with blood from bullet
wounds in my right arm and in my side, though I felt no pain from them
at the time; all the pain was concentrated in my broken left arm.

There came a battering at the barred door, to which my back was turned,
and a moment afterwards the other door swung open, and an officer sprang
in, sword in hand, followed by a couple of soldiers with fixed bayonets.

He stopped short, with an exclamation of astonishment, at the sight of
the dead man, and I laughed aloud, and called:

"Hello, Mirakoff!"

It was queer; I recognized him, I heard myself laugh and speak, in a
strange detached fashion, as if I was some one else, having no
connection with the battered individual half sitting, half lying on the
blood-stained floor.

"Who is it?" he asked, staying his men with a gesture, and staring down
at me with a puzzled frown.

"Maurice Wynn."

"Monsieur Wynn! _Ma foi!_ What the devil are you doing here?"

"Curiosity," I said. "And I guess I've paid for it!"

I suppose I must have fainted then, for the next thing I knew I was
sitting with my back to a tree, while a soldier beside me, leaning on
his rifle, exchanged ribald pleasantries with some of his comrades who,
assisted by several stolid-faced _moujiks_, were busily engaged in
filling in and stamping down a huge and hastily dug grave.

At a little distance, three officers, one of them Mirakoff, were talking
together, and beside them, thrown on an outspread coat, was a heap of
oddments, chiefly papers, revolvers, and "killers." As I looked a
soldier gathered these up into a bundle, and hoisted it on his shoulder.
A watch and chain fell out, and he picked them up, and pocketed them.

I heard a hoarse word of command on the right, and saw a number of
prisoners--the remnant of the revolutionists, each with a soldier beside
him--file into the wood. They a