escend by the rocks more rapidly than by the
usual road to a little outpost which he had placed at the entrance of
the town, on the side toward the chateau, when a slight noise arrested
him. He fancied he heard the light step of a woman on the gravelled path
behind him. He turned his head and saw no one, but his eyes were caught
by an extraordinary light upon the ocean. Suddenly he beheld a sight so
alarming that he stood for a moment motionless with surprise, fancying
that his senses were mistaken. The white rays of the moonlight enabled
him to distinguish sails at some distance. He tried to convince himself
that this vision was an optical delusion caused by the caprices of the
waves and the moon. At that moment, a hoarse voice uttered his name. He
looked toward the opening in the wall, and saw the head of the orderly
who had accompanied him to the chateau rising cautiously through it.

"Is it you, commander?"

"Yes. What is it?" replied the young man, in a low voice, a sort of
presentiment warning him to act mysteriously.

"Those rascals are squirming like worms," said the man; "and I have
come, if you please, to tell you my little observations."

"Speak out."

"I have just followed from the chateau a man with a lantern who is
coming this way. A lantern is mightily suspicious! I don't believe that
Christian has any call to go and light the church tapers at this time
of night. They want to murder us! said I to myself, so I followed his
heels; and I've discovered, commander, close by here, on a pile of rock,
a great heap of fagots--he's after lighting a beacon of some kind up
here, I'll be bound--"

A terrible cry echoing suddenly through the town stopped the soldier's
speech. A brilliant light illuminated the young officer. The poor
orderly was shot in the head and fell. A fire of straw and dry wood
blazed up like a conflagration not thirty feet distant from the young
commander. The music and the laughter ceased in the ballroom. The
silence of death, broken only by moans, succeeded to the joyous sounds
of a festival. A single cannon-shot echoed along the plain of the ocean.

A cold sweat rolled from the officer's brow. He wore no sword. He was
confident that his soldiers were murdered, and that the English were
about to disembark. He saw himself dishonored if he lived, summoned
before a council of war to explain his want of vigilance; then he
measured with his eye the depths of the descent, and was springing
to