ith both hands, and with a mighty effort
wrenched himself aside. His heart seemed to strain and burst, and just
as he felt the end was come, he heard something crash on the murderer's
skull, and the great creature fell with a gurgling sound, and lay like
a parcel of loose bones across his knees. Valmond raised himself, a
strange, dull wonder on him, for as the weapon smote this lifeless
creature, he had seen another hurl by and strike the opposite wall. A
moment afterwards the dead man was pulled away by Parpon. Trying to rise
he felt blood trickling down his neck, and he turned sick and blind. As
the world slipped away from him, a soft shoulder caught his head, and
out of a vast distance there came to him the wailing cry: "He is dying!
my love! my love!"

Peril and horror had brought to Elise's breast the one being in the
world for her, the face which was etched like a picture upon her eyes
and heart.

Parpon groaned with a strange horror as he dragged the body from
Valmond. For a moment he knelt gasping beside the shapeless being, his
great hands spasmodically feeling the pulseless breast.

Soon afterwards in the blacksmith's house the two girls nestled in each
other's arms, and Valmond, shaken and weak, returned to the smithy.

In the dull glare of the forge fire knelt Parpon, rocking back and forth
beside the body. Hearing Valmond, he got to his feet.

"You have killed him," he said, pointing.

"No, no, not I," answered Valmond. "Some one threw a hammer."

"There were two hammers."

"It was Elise?" asked Valmond, with a shudder. "No, not Elise; it was
you," said the dwarf, with a strange insistence.

"I tell you no," said Valmond. "It was you, Parpon."

"By God, it is a lie!" cried the dwarf, with a groan. Then he came close
to Valmond. "He was--my brother! Do you not see?" he demanded fiercely,
his eyes full of misery. "Do you not see that it was you? Yes, yes, it
was you."

Stooping, Valmond caught the little man in an embrace. "It was I that
killed him, Parpon. It was I, comrade. You saved my life," he added
significantly. "The girl threw, but missed," said Parpon. "She does not
know but that she struck him."

"She must be told."

"I will tell her that you killed him. Leave it to me--all to me, my
grand seigneur."

A half-hour afterwards the avocat, the Cure, and the Little Chemist, had
heard the story as the dwarf told it, and Valmond returned to the Louis
Quinze a hero. For hours the habitants