ave to tell how I had been
flung under the coach-wheels. My pace slackened to a stop. I could not
bring myself to enter the door. I tried to think how to better my story,
so to tell it that it should redound to my credit. But my invention
stuck in my pate.

As I stood striving to summon up a jaunty demeanour, I found myself
gazing straight at the shuttered house, and of a sudden my thoughts
shifted back to my vision.

Those murdered Huguenots, dead and gone ere I was born, had appeared to
me as plain as the men I passed in the street. Though I had beheld them
but the space of a lightning-flash, I could call up their faces like
those of my comrades. One, the nearest me, was small, pale, with
pinched, sharp face, somewhat rat-like. The second man was conspicuously
big and burly, black-haired and-bearded. The third and youngest--all
three were young--stood with his hand on Blackbeard's shoulder. He, too,
was tall, but slenderly built, with clear-cut visage and fair hair
gleaming in the glare. One moment I saw them, every feature plain; the
next they had vanished like a dream.

It was an unholy thing, no doubt, yet it held me with a shuddery
fascination. Was it indeed a portent, this rising of heretics from their
unblessed graves? And why had it been shown to me, true son of the
Church? Had any one else ever seen what I had seen? Maitre Jacques had
hinted at further terrors, and said no one dared enter the place. Well,
grant me but the opportunity, and I would dare.

Thus was hatched in my brain the notion of forcing an entrance into that
banned house. I was an idle boy, foot-loose and free to do whatever mad
mischief presented itself. Here was the house just across the street.

Neglected as it was, it remained the most pretentious edifice in the
row, being large and flaunting a half-defaced coat of arms over the
door. Such a house might well boast two entrances. I hoped it did, for
there was no use in trying to batter down this door with the eye of the
Rue Coupejarrets upon me. I turned along the side street, and after
exploring several muck-heaped alleys found one that led me into a small
square court bounded on three sides by a tall house with shuttered
windows.

Fortune was favouring me. But how to gain entrance? The two doors were
both firmly fastened. The windows on the ground floor were small, high,
and iron-shuttered. Above, one or two shutters swung half open, but I
could not climb the smooth wall. Yet I did