erers
dashed themselves upon the door.

I dragged at the heavy table, and, with a strength that amazed myself,
pushed and pulled it before the door. It would make the panels a little
firmer.

Was there no escape? None? I ran once more into the second chamber. Its
shutters were closed; I threw them open. There was no other door to the
room, no hiding-place. There was a chimney, but spanned a foot above the
fireplace by two iron bars. The thinnest sweep that ever wielded broom
could not have squeezed between them.

In despair, I ran to the window again. Top of the house as it was, I
thought I would sooner leap than be stabbed to death. I stuck my head
out. It was the same window where I had stood when Grammont seized me.
There, not ten feet away, eight at the most, but a little above me, was
the casement of my garret in the Amour de Dieu. Would it be possible to
jump and catch the sill? If I did, I could scarce pull myself in.

I looked below me. There swung the sign of the Amour de Dieu. And there
beside it stood a homespun figure surely known to me. There was no
mistaking that bald pate. I yelled at the top of my lungs:

"Maitre Jacques!"

He looked up, gaping at this voice out of the sky, but, despite his
amazement, I saw that he knew me.

"Maitre Jacques! We're being murdered! We can't get out! Help us for the
love of Christ! Bring a plank, a rope, to the window there!"

For an instant he stood confounded. Then he vanished into the inn.

I waited, on fire. Still from the next room sounded the clash of steel.
White shirt and black doublet passed the door in turn, unflagging,
ungaining.

Suddenly came a new noise from the passage, of trampling and rending,
blows and oaths. My first thought was that they were fighting out there,
that rescuers had come. Then, as I listened, I learned better.
Despairing of kicking down the door, they were tearing out a piece of
stair-rail for a battering-ram. It would not long stand against that.

I ran back to the window. No Jacques appeared. We were lost, lost!

Hark, from the next room a cry, a fall! Well, were it Lucas's victory,
he might kill me as well as another. I walked into the back room. But it
was Lucas who lay prone.

"Come, come!" I cried, clutching monsieur's wrist. But he would not till
with Lucas's own misericorde he had given him coup de grace.

Crash! Crash! The upper panel shivered in twain. A great splinter six
inches wide, hanging from the top, blocke