es might as well be lying on his threshold with his dead servant
by his side, as be in hiding within that ring of ordered swords.

It was with despairing eyes we looked at the old wooden houses. They
seemed to be bowing themselves towards us, their upper stories
projected so far, they were so decrepit. Their roofs were a wilderness
of gutters and crooked gables, of tottering chimneys and wooden
pinnacles and rotting beams, Amongst these I judged Kit's lover was
hiding. Well, it was a good place for hide and seek--with any other
player than DEATH. In the ground floors of the houses there were no
windows and no doors; by reason, I learned afterwards, of the frequent
flooding of the river. But a long wooden gallery raised on struts ran
along the front, rather more than the height of a man from the ground,
and access to this was gained by a wooden staircase at each end. Above
this first gallery was a second, and above that a line of windows set
between the gables. The block--it may have run for seventy or eighty
yards along the shore--contained four houses, each with a door opening
on to the lower gallery. I saw indeed that but for the Vidame's
precautions Louis might well have escaped. Had the mob once poured
helter-skelter into that labyrinth of rooms and passages he might with
luck have mingled with them, unheeded and unrecognized, and effected
his escape when they retreated.

But now there were sentries on each gallery and more on the roof.
Whenever one of the latter moved or seemed to be looking inward--where
a search party, I understood, were at work--indeed, if he did but turn
his head, a thrill ran through the crowd and a murmur arose, which once
or twice swelled to a savage roar such as earlier had made me tremble.
When this happened the impulse came, it seemed to me, from the farther
end of the line. There the rougher elements were collected, and there
I more than once saw Bezers' troopers in conflict with the mob. In
that quarter too a savage chant was presently struck up, the whole
gathering joining in and yelling with an indescribably appalling effect:

"Hau! Hau! Huguenots!
Faites place aux Papegots!"

in derision of the old song said to be popular amongst the Protestants.
But in the Huguenot version the last words were of course transposed.

We had worked our way by this time to the front of the line, and
looking into one another's eyes, mutely asked a question; but not even
Croisette had