full, both would seize their picks and dig furiously at
the floor of the tower. Then when they had enough loosened, they
would fall to shovelling the curiously shaped objects into the sacks
again.

As Sholto looked down he heard a hissing whisper at his ear.

"These be Blanchet the sorcerer and Robin Romulart. But last week they
took notice of my little Jean and praised him for a noble boy."

Sholto turned round, and there at his elbow, having followed them in
spite of all orders and precautions, he discerned the woodman Louis
Verger, whose little son had been carried off by the grey she-wolf.

Sholto motioned him back, and at a sign from the Duke, his father and
he began to descend. So silently did they make their way down the
stone steps, and so intent were the men upon their work, that in a
minute after leaving the little gallery Malise stood behind the taller
and Sholto stole like a shadow along the wall nearer to the little
rotund man who had been called Robin Romulart.

The Duke held up his hand. Sholto and Malise each took their man about
the throat with their left arms and pulled them backward, at the same
time covering their mouths with their right hands. Blanchet never
moved in the strong arms of Malise. But Robin, whose rotund figure
concealed his great muscular development, might have escaped from
Sholto had not the woodman Verger flung himself at the little man's
throat and brought him to the ground. Then the Duke and the others
descended, and as they did so they became conscious of a choking
mephitic vapour which clung dank and heavy to the lower courses of the
tower.

Suddenly a wild cry made all shiver. It came from Louis Verger, who
had sprung upon something that lay tossed aside in a corner.

"Silence, man--on your life! Silence!" hissed Pierre de l'Hopital.
"Whatever you have found, think only of revenge and help us to it!"

"I have found him. He is dead! The fiends! The fiends!" sobbed Louis
Verger, covering a small partially charred object with the curtmantle
of which he had rapidly divested himself for the purpose.

Then it came upon those who stood on the floor of the tower that they
were in the marshal's main charnel-house. These vague forms, mostly
charred like half-burned wood, these scraps of white bone, these
little crushed skulls, were all that remained of the innocent children
who, in the freshness of their youth and beauty, had been seduced into
the fatal Castle of Machecoul.