in this draught!" cried Gilles de Retz. "The Red Milk,
the precious milk of innocence, to thee I drink it!"

And he set the cup to his lips and drank deep and long.

* * * * *

"It comes. It fills me. I am strong. O Barran, give me yet more
strength. My limbs revive. My pulse beats. I am young as when I rode
with Dunois. Barran, thou art indeed mightier than God. I will give
thee yet more and more. I swear it. I have kept the best wine till the
last--the death vintage of a great house. The wine of beauty and
brightness--I have kept it for thee. Halt not to make me stronger!
Help me--Barran, help--I fail--!"

His voice had risen higher and higher till it was well nigh a scream
of agony. Strangely too, in spite of the fictitious youth that glowed
in his veins and coloured his cheek, it sounded like a senile shriek.

But all suddenly, at the very height of his exaltation, the cup from
which he had drunk slipped from his hand and rolled upon the
tesselated pavement of the temple, staining it in gouts and vivid
blotches of crimson.

"Hasten, ere I lose the power--I feel it checked. Poitou, De Sille,
Henriet, go bring hither from the White Tower the Scottish maids.
Run, dogs--or you die! Quick, Henriet! Good De Sille, quick! Fail not
your master now! It ebbs, it weakens--and it was so near completion.
Stay, O Barran, till I finish the sacrifice, and here at thy feet
offer up to thee the richest, and the fairest, and the noblest! Bring
hither the maidens! I tell you, bring them quickly!"

And the terrible Lord of Retz, exhausted with his own fury, cast
himself at the feet of the gigantic image, which, bending over him,
seemed with the same grimace sardonically to mock alike his exaltation
and his downfall.

But Laurence heard no more. For sense and feeling had wholly departed
from him, and he lay as one dead behind the door of the temple of
Barran-Sathanas, Lord of Evil, in the thrice-abhorrent Castle of
Machecoul.

CHAPTER LVI

THE SHADOW BEHIND THE THRONE

Within the grim walls of Black Angers Duke John of Brittany and
reigning sovereign of western France was holding his court. The city
and fortress did not properly, of right and parchment holding,
appertain to him. But he had occupied it during the recent troubles
with the English, and his loving cousin and nominal suzerain Charles
the Seventh of France had not yet been strong enough to make him
render it up again.

Th