our? With what weapons?

"If you are the vilest of men, you can appoint a rendezvous, and then
send your gendarmes to arrest me. That would be an act worthy of you.

"Maurice d'Escorval."

The duke was in despair. He saw the secret of the baron's flight made
public--his political prospects ruined.

"Hush!" he said, hurriedly, and in a low voice; "hush, wretched man, you
will ruin us!"

But Martial seemed not even to hear him. When he had finished his
reading:

"Now, what do you think?" he demanded, looking the Marquis de
Courtornieu full in the face.

"I am still unable to comprehend," said the old nobleman, coldly.

Martial lifted his hand; everyone believed that he was about to strike
the man who had been his father-in-law only a few hours.

"Very well! I comprehend!" he exclaimed. "I know now who that officer
was who entered the room in which I had deposited the ropes--and I know
what took him there."

He crumbled the letter between his hands and threw it in M. de
Courtornieu's face, saying:

"Here is your reward--coward!"

Overwhelmed by this _denouement_ the marquis sank into an arm-chair, and
Martial, still holding Jean Lacheneur by the arm, was leaving the room,
when his young wife, wild with despair, tried to detain him.

"You shall not go!" she exclaimed, intensely exasperated; "you shall
not! Where are you going? To rejoin the sister of the man, whom I now
recognize?"

Beside himself, Martial pushed his wife roughly aside.

"Wretch!" said he, "how dare you insult the noblest and purest of women?
Ah, well--yes--I am going to find Marie-Anne. Farewell!"

And he passed on.

CHAPTER XXXV

The ledge of rock upon which Baron d'Escorval and Corporal Bavois rested
in their descent from the tower was very narrow.

In the widest place it did not measure more than a yard and a half, and
its surface was uneven, cut by innumerable fissures and crevices, and
sloped suddenly at the edge. To stand there in the daytime, with the
wall of the tower behind one, and the precipice at one's feet, would
have been considered very imprudent.

Of course, the task of lowering a man from this ledge, at dead of night,
was perilous in the extreme.

Before allowing the baron to descend, honest Bavois took every possible
precaution to save himself from being dragged over the verge of the
precipice by the weight he would be obliged to sustain.

He placed his crowbar firmly in a crevice of the rock, then braci