too full of other trouble to permit her to indulge her
thoughts overlong upon such a matter. A volley of musketry from below
came to warn them of the happenings there. The air was charged with the
hideous howls of the besieging mob, and presently there was a cry
from one of the ladies, as a sudden glare of light crimsoned the
window-panes.

"What is that?" asked Madame de Bellecour of her husband.

"They have fired the stables," he answered, through set teeth. "I
suppose they need light to guide them in their hell's work."

He strode to the glass doors opening to the balcony the same balcony
from which four years ago his guests had watched the flogging of La
Boulaye--and, opening them, he passed out. His appearance was greeted by
a storm of execration. A sudden shot rang out, and the bullet, striking
the wall immediately above him, brought down a shower of plaster on his
head. It had been fired by a demoniac who sat astride the great gates
waving his discharged carbine and yelling such ordures of speech as it
had never been the most noble Marquis's lot to have stood listening to.
Bellecour never flinched. As calmly as if nothing had happened, he leant
over the parapet and called to his men below.

"Hold, there! Of what are you dreaming slumberers. Shoot me that fellow
down."

Their guns had been discharged, but one of them, who had now completed
his reloading, levelled the carbine and fired. The figure on the gates
seemed to leap up from his sitting posture, and then with a scream he
went over, back to his friends without.

The fired stables were burning gaily by now, and the cheeriest bonfire
man could have desired on a dark night, and in the courtyard it was
become as light as day.

The Marquis on the balcony was taking stock of his defences and making
rapid calculations in his mind. He saw no reason why, so well
protected by those stout oaken gates they should not--if they were but
resolute--eventually beat back the mob. And then, even as his courage
was rising at the thought, a deafening explosion seemed to shake the
entire Chateau, and the gates--their sole buckler, upon whose shelter he
had been so confidently building--crashed open, half blown away by the
gunpowder keg that had been fired against it.

He had a fleeting glimpse of a stream of black fiends pouring through
the dark gap and dashing with deafening yells into the crimson light
of the courtyard. He saw his little handful of servants retreat
pr