man to his taste. But give me a broad butcher's knife and I'll ask no
help, be it man, woman, or child!"

A bystander, a lean man in rusty black, chuckled as he listened.

"But the woman or the child for choice, eh, Jehan?" he said. And he
looked to Tignonville to join in the jest.

"Ay, give me a white throat for choice!" the cripple answered, with
horrible zest. "And there'll be delicate necks to prick to-night! Lord,
I think I hear them squeal! You don't need it, sir?" he continued, again
proffering the whetstone. "No? Then I'll give my blade another whet, in
the name of our Lady, the Saints, and good Father Pezelay!"

"Ay, and give me a turn!" the lean man cried, proffering his weapon. "May
I die if I do not kill one of the accursed for every finger of my hands!"

"And toe of my feet!" the cripple answered, not to be outdone. "And toe
of my feet! A full score!"

"'Tis according to your sins!" the other, who had something of the air of
a Churchman, answered. "The more heretics killed, the more sins
forgiven. Remember that, brother, and spare not if your soul be
burdened! They blaspheme God and call Him paste! In the paste of their
own blood," he continued ferociously, "I will knead them and roll them
out, saith the good Father Pezelay, my master!"

The cripple crossed himself. "Whom God keep," he said. "He is a good
man. But you are looking ill, noble sir?" he continued, peering
curiously at the young Huguenot.

"'Tis the heat," Tignonville muttered. "The night is stifling, and the
lights make it worse. I will go nearer the door."

He hoped to escape them; he had some hope even of escaping from the room
and giving the alarm. But when he had forced his way to the threshold,
he found it guarded by two pikemen; and glancing back to see if his
movements were observed--for he knew that his agitation might have
awakened suspicion--he found that the taller of the two whom he had left,
the black-garbed man with the hungry face, was watching him a-tiptoe,
over the shoulders of the crowd.

With that, and the sense of his impotence, the lights began to swim
before his eyes. The catastrophe that overhung his party, the fate so
treacherously prepared for all whom he loved and all with whom his
fortunes were bound up, confused his brain almost to delirium. He strove
to think, to calculate chances, to imagine some way in which he might
escape from the room, or from a window might cry the alarm. Bu