I lay for some time where I had fallen, nursing my bruises and reflecting with bitterness upon the singular gratitude of princes. I was dazed by the suddenness, the unexpectedness, of it all. What had I done that I should be treated so? And then, in a breath, a flash of light broke in upon me and brought me to my feet. What was it Letourge had said, “He will finish the work he began in the Rue Gogard.” The Rue Gogard—but that was where I had met Claire. Could it be that it was Letourge and M. le Comte whom I had resisted there; that it was into the face of M. le Comte himself that white-hot iron had seared? I shuddered as I recalled the hiss of the iron into his flesh, the smell of burning, his cry of agony! Small wonder he should thirst for vengeance! Death on the gibbet would be merciful beside the torture which he had suffered and which he must suffer still.

I sat down again to think it out. Yes, there could be no doubt of it—I had been blind not to see it before. The man in armor had been styled “M. le Comte” in Duval’s room; he had called his companion Gaspard, and it was Gaspard whom he had cursed from his bed. Gaspard, of course, was Letourge. And then Duval’s despair when I had told him who I was—oh, there could be no doubt of it! And, in a flash, I saw the full peril of my position.

Here, then, was I, Paul de Marsan, about to be hanged by order of the Comte de Cadillac, whose family we of Marsan had served faithfully for two centuries and more, and whose favor I had thought to win. It had remained for me to be the first to betray him—though how was I to know?—and to be the first of the Marsans to die with a rope about his neck. I saw tumbling about my ears all those pretty castles in the air which I had spent so much time in building while floating along the Midouze or taking a lesson with the sword from old Maitre Perigneau, who had tested his art by my father’s side—and my grandfather’s, as well—in a hundred combats. It is not a pleasant thing when one is only twenty, with a heart warm for adventure, to see just ahead the end of the path—and such an end! More shaken than I cared to own, I rose again to my feet and determined to find out the nature of this place into which I had been cast. Perhaps I might yet escape, and M. le Comte would be less vengeful once his wound had healed.

The cell was not large, as I discovered by feeling my way along the walls, all of great stones, delicately fitted,—ten feet square at the most,—and the low, iron-studded door the only opening. Plainly, I could not go out until that door was opened, and the path from it to the gibbet seemed like to be a short one. I stood for a time leaning against it; at last, overcome by weariness and despair, I sank into one corner and dropped into a troubled sleep.

Then, of a sudden, I awoke to feel my wrists seized by iron hands and twisted behind me. I struggled till my heart seemed like to burst, certain that this was the end, but those great hands clung to me and would not be shaken off.

“Hold him so,” a voice whispered, and the hands tightened.

I lay still, the sweat starting from my forehead, waiting the blow that would end it. A hand tore the doublet from my breast,—there was a moment’s silence broken only by the crackling of a paper,—then the voice whispered again,—

“Strike him!”

A great blow fell upon my head.