me to a lock of her hair, I tell you that there is not a living soul
within this portcullis who will not die a death of torture. Fools, will
you gasp out your lives upon the rack, or writhe in boiling oil, at the
bidding of this madman?"

"Who are these men, Marceau?" cried the seigneur furiously.

"They are prisoners, your excellency."

"Prisoners! Whose prisoners?"

"Yours, your excellency."

"Who ordered you to detain them?"

"You did. The escort brought your signet-ring."

"I never saw the men. There is devilry in this. But they shall not
beard me in my own castle, nor stand between me and my own wife.
No, _par dieu!_ they shall not and live! You men, Marceau, Etienne,
Gilbert, Jean, Pierre, all you who have eaten my bread, on to them, I
say!"

He glanced round with furious eyes, but they fell only upon hung heads
and averted faces. With a hideous curse he flashed out his sword and
rushed at his wife, who knelt half insensible beside the block.
De Catinat sprang between them to protect her; but Marceau, the bearded
seneschal, had already seized his master round the waist. With the
strength of a maniac, his teeth clenched and the foam churning from the
corners of his lips, De Montespan writhed round in the man's grasp, and
shortening his sword, he thrust it through the brown beard and deep into
the throat behind it. Marceau fell back with a choking cry, the blood
bubbling from his mouth and his wound; but before his murderer could
disengage his weapon, De Catinat and the American, aided by a dozen of
the retainers, had dragged him down on to the scaffold, and Amos Green
had pinioned him so securely that he could but move his eyes and his
lips, with which he lay glaring and spitting at them. So savage were
his own followers against him--for Marceau was well loved amongst them--
that, with axe and block so ready, justice might very swiftly have had
her way, had not a long clear bugle-call, rising and falling in a
thousand little twirls and flourishes, clanged out suddenly in the still
morning air. De Catinat pricked up his ears at the sound of it like a
hound at the huntsman's call.

"Did you hear, Amos?"

"It was a trumpet."

"It was the guards' bugle-call. You, there, hasten to the gate!
Throw up the portcullis and drop the drawbridge! Stir yourselves, or
even now you may suffer for your master's sins! It has been a narrow
escape, Amos!"

"You may say so, friend. I saw him put out his ha