The news was staggering. Count Halfont had based his strongest hopes on the assistance that would naturally come from the villages. Moreover, the strangely commissioned emissaries cast additional gloom over the situation by the report that mountaineers, herdsmen and woodchoppers in the north were flocking to the assistance of the Iron Count, followed by hordes of outlaws from the Axphain hills. They were swarming into the city. These men had always been thorns in the sides of the Crown's peace-makers.
"It is worse than I thought," said Count Halfont, after listening to the words of the excited magistrates. "Are there no loyal men outside these walls?"
"Thousands, sir, but they are not organised. They have no leader, and but little with which to fight against such a force."
"It is hard to realise that a force of three or four thousand desperadoes has the power to defy an entire kingdom. A city of 75,000 people in the hands of hirelings! The shame of it!"
Truxton King was leaning against a column not far from the little group, nervously pulling away at the pipe Quinnox had given him. As if impelled by a common thought, a half dozen pairs of eyes were turned in his direction. Their owners looked as quickly away, again moved by a common thought.
The Minister of Mines gave utterance to a single sentence that might well have been called the epitome of that shrewd, concentrated thought:
"There must be some one who can get to John Tullis before it is too late."
They looked at one another and then once more at the American who had come among them, avowedly in quest of adventure.