and deliberately he ascended to the broad platform
from which the iron altar rose, and stood with his arms folded over
his flame-coloured robe, looking gloatingly down, upon his innocent
victims. Maud Lindesay was the nearer to him, and her unbound hair
fell back and touched the peak of his pointed shoe of crimson Cordovan
leather.

With a quick movement he caught up a handful of its rich luxuriance
and allowed it to run through his fingers like sand again and yet
again, with apparent delight in the sensation.

Even as he did so the dim figure of the horned demon above appeared to
lean forward as if to touch him, and with a rushing noise the great
hour-glass set upon a pedestal at the foot of the image turned itself
completely over. Gilles with a startled air turned also, and seeing
what it was he laughed a strange hollow laugh.

"It is indeed the hour, the hour of doom, fair maids," he said,
looking down upon them as deferentially as if he had been paying his
court in the great hall of Thrieve, "but it shall not pass without
taking with it your souls to another, and I trust a higher, sphere!"

He paused, but no complaint or appeal reached his cruel and inexorable
ear. The certain graciousness of Providence to those in extreme peril
seemed to have blunted the edge of fear in the innocent victims. They
lay still and apparently without consciousness upon the iron altar.
The red glow played upon their faces, shining through from the inner
chamber, and the figure of the marshal stood out black against it.

On the floor lay the goblet from which he had drunk the Red Milk.

"Give me the knife!" he cried, sudden as a trumpet that is blown.

And reaching a withered hand within the marshal's chamber as if to
detach something from the wall, La Meffraye hobbled quickly across the
altar platform, bearing in her hand a shining weapon of steel, broad
of blade and curved at the point. She placed the ebony handle in the
marshal's hand, who weighed it lovingly in his grasp.

Then for the first time since the men had bound her, the sweet
childish eyes of little Margaret were unclosed and looked up at Gilles
de Retz with the touching wonder of helplessness and innocence.

At that moment the image appeared to Laurence to beckon to him out of
the gloom. A quick and nervous resolve ran through his veins. His
muscles became like steel within his flesh. He rose to his feet, and,
without pause for thought, rushed across the chapel fro