hobbling
crutch and cackling laughter of La Meffraye.

Across the wide courtyard of Machecoul they went. It also was filled
with the reflection of the red tide of light which ebbed and flowed,
waxing and waning above. Saving for that window the whole castle was
wrapped in gloom and silence, and if there were any awake within the
precincts they knew better than to spy upon the midnight doings of
their dread lord.

The little party passed up the great staircase of the keep and
presently halted before the inscribed wooden door by which Laurence
had entered the Temple of Evil.

As Gilles de Sille opened it for the maids to precede him, the skirt
of Maud Lindesay's robe, blown back by the draught of the chamber,
fluttered against the cheek of Laurence MacKim as he lay on his face
in the niche of the wall. At the light touch he came to himself, and
looked about with a strange and instant change in all the affections
and movements of his heart.

With the coming in of the maidens, fear seemed utterly to forsake him.
A clarity of purpose, an alertness of brain, a strength of heart
unknown before, took the place of the trembling bath of horror in
which he had swooned away.

It was like the sudden appearance of two white angels walking fearless
and unscathed through the grim dominions of the Lords of Hell.

Incarnate Good had somehow entered the house of the Demon, though it
was in the slender periphery of two maidens' bodies, and evil, strong
and resistless before, seemed in the moment to lose half its power.

[Illustration: IT WAS LIKE THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF TWO WHITE ANGELS
WALKING FEARLESS AND UNSCATHED THROUGH THE GRIM DOMINIONS OF THE LORDS
OF HELL.]

CHAPTER LIX

THE LAST SACRIFICE TO BARRAN-SATHANAS

And as Laurence MacKim, crouched in the dim obscurity of the curtained
doorway, looked forth, this is what he saw.

Maud Lindesay and Margaret Douglas advanced into the centre of the
temple where was a slab of white marble let into the floor. As if by
instinct the two maids stopped upon it, standing hand in hand before
the iron altar and the vast shadowy image which gloomed above and
appeared to reach forward in act to clutch them. After the first check
in his hideous incantations, Gilles de Retz had returned to his own
chamber, in which, after his entrance, the light gleamed brighter and
more fiercely red than ever. As the maidens stood on the marble square
La Meffraye went to the door and called cert