as their savage haste, impeded them. When they burst in
at last, with a roar of "To the river! To the river!"--burst in a rush
of struggling shoulders and lowered pikes, they found him standing, a
solitary figure, on the further side of the table, his arms folded. And
the sight of the passive figure for a moment stayed them.

"Say your prayers, child of Satan!" cried the leader, waving his weapon.
"We give you one minute!"

"Ay, one minute!" his followers chimed in. "Be ready!"

"You would murder me?" he said with dignity. And when they shouted
assent, "Good!" he answered. "It is between you and M. de Biron, whose
guest I am. But"--with a glance which passed round the ring of glaring
eyes and working features--"I would leave a last word for some one. Is
there any one here who values a safe-conduct from the King? 'Tis for two
men coming and going for a fortnight." And he held up a slip of paper.

The leader cried, "To hell with his safe-conduct! Say your prayers!"

But all were not of his mind. On one or two of the savage faces--the
faces, for the most part, of honest men maddened by their wrongs--flashed
an avaricious gleam. A safe-conduct? To avenge, to slay, to kill--and
to go safe! For some minds such a thing has an invincible fascination. A
man thrust himself forward.

"Ay, I'll have it!" he cried. "Give it here!"

"It is yours," Count Hannibal answered, "if you will carry ten words to
Marshal Tavannes--when I am gone."

The man's neighbour laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

"And Marshal Tavannes will pay you finely," he said.

But Maudron, the man who had offered, shook off the hand.

"If I take the message!" he muttered in a grim aside. "Do you think me
mad?" And then aloud he cried, "Ay, I'll take your message! Give me the
paper."

"You swear you will take it?"

The man had no intention of taking it, but he perjured himself and went
forward. The others would have pressed round too, half in envy, half in
scorn; but Tavannes by a gesture stayed them.

"Gentlemen, I ask a minute only," he said. "A minute for a dying man is
not much. Your friends had as much."

And the fellows, acknowledging the claim and assured that their victim
could not escape, let Maudron go round the table to him.

The man was in haste and ill at ease, conscious of his evil intentions
and the fraud he was practising; and at once greedy to have, yet ashamed
of the bargain he was making. His attent