k, passed the dangling rope, and made for a little
square projecting tower. They had barely rounded it when the light shot
trembling past them, and flickered uncertainly into the distance.

"A lantern!" groaned Martin in a whisper. "They are after us."

"Give me my knife," whispered Gerard. "I'll never be taken alive."

"No, no!" murmured Margaret; "is there no way out where we are?"

"None! none! But I carry six lives at my shoulder;" and with the word,
Martin strung his bow, and fitted an arrow to the string: "in war never
wait to be struck: I will kill one or two ere they shall know where
their death comes from:" then, motioning his companions to be quiet he
began to draw his bow, and, ere the arrow was quite drawn to the head,
he glided round the corner ready to loose the string the moment the
enemy should offer a mark.

Gerard and Margaret held their breath in horrible expectation: they had
never seen a human being killed.

And now a wild hope, but half repressed, thrilled through Gerard, that
this watchful enemy might be the burgomaster in person. The soldier, he
knew, would send an arrow through a burgher or burgomaster, as he would
through a boar in a wood.

But who may foretell the future, however near? The bow, instead of
remaining firm, and loosing the deadly shaft, was seen to waver first,
then shake violently, and the stout soldier staggered back to them, his
knees knocking and his cheeks blanched with fear. He let his arrow fall,
and clutched Gerard's shoulder.

"Let me feel flesh and blood," he gasped. "The haunted tower! the
haunted tower!"

His terror communicated itself to Margaret and Gerard. They gasped
rather than uttered an inquiry.

"Hush!" he cried, "it will hear you up the wall! it is going up the
wall! Its head is on fire. Up the wall, as mortal creatures walk upon
green sward. If you know a prayer, say it, for hell is loose to-night."

"I have power to exorcise spirits," said Gerard, trembling. "I will
venture forth."

"Go alone then," said Martin; "I have looked on't once, and live."

CHAPTER XI

The strange glance of hatred the burgomaster had cast on Gerard, coupled
with his imprisonment, had filled the young man with a persuasion that
Ghysbrecht was his enemy to the death, and he glided round the angle of
the tower, fully expecting to see no supernatural appearance, but some
cruel and treacherous contrivance of a bad man to do him a mischief in
that prison, his escape