t it was. I leant against the wall,
holding my breath.

'Only that wench in one of her tantrums!' the man who had come out
answered, applying an epithet to her which I will not set down, but
which I carried to his account in the event of our coming face to face
presently. 'She is quiet now. She may hammer and hammer, but--'

The rest I lost, as he passed through the doorway and went back to his
place by the fire. But in one way his words were of advantage to me.
I concluded that I need not be so very cautious now, seeing that they
would set down anything they heard to the same cause; and I sped on more
quickly, I had just gained the second floor landing when a loud noise
below--the opening of the street door and the heavy tread of feet in the
hall--brought me to a temporary standstill. I looked cautiously over the
balustrade, and saw two men go across to the room on the left. One
of them spoke as he entered, chiding the other knaves, I fancied, for
leaving the door unbarred; and the tone, though not the words, echoing
sullenly up the staircase, struck a familiar chord in my memory. The
voice was Fresnoy's!

CHAPTER X. THE FIGHT ON THE STAIRS.

The certainty, which this sound gave me, that I was in the right house,
and that it held also the villain to whom I owed all my misfortunes--for
who but Fresnoy could have furnished the broken coin which had deceived
mademoiselle?--had a singularly inspiriting effect upon me. I felt every
muscle in my body grow on the instant; hard as steel, my eyes more keen,
my ears sharper--all my senses more apt and vigorous. I stole off like
a cat from the balustrade, over which I had been looking, and without a
second's delay began the search for mademoiselle's room; reflecting that
though the garrison now amounted to four, I had no need to despair. If I
could release the prisoners without noise--which would be easy were the
key in the lock--we might hope to pass through the hall by a tour de
force of one kind or another. And a church-clock at this moment striking
Five, and reminding me that we had only half an hour in which to do all
and reach the horses, I was the more inclined to risk something.

The light which I had seen from below hung in a flat-bottomed lantern
just beyond the head of the stairs, and outside the entrance to one
of two passages which appeared to lead to the back part of the house.
Suspecting that M. de Bruhl's business had lain with mademoiselle, I
guessed tha