Within fifteen feet of him, and between him and Adam, suddenly Halberd heard a sound that made him halt where he stood. Three figures, their faces masked with black cloth, ran out from a deep doorway, where they had crowded back, for concealment, and darted upon the rover, walking unconsciously onward.
“Sachem! Sachem!” cried the beef-eater, wildly.
He darted forward, in time to see Adam turn to receive a stab in the neck and a blow on the head that sent him to earth before he could even so much as raise a hand to ward off his murderous assailants.
Dragging his sword from his scabbard as he ran, old Halberd leaped frantically into the midst of the three asassins, ready to battle against any odds conceivable, in this the climax-moment of his loyalty.
He struck but a single blow, which fell upon one of the bludgeons held by the masked ruffians. He screamed out his terrible tocsin of anguish and rage. Then a blow from behind him crushed in his skull and he fell across the master he had striven to serve, a corpse.
Waiting for nothing further, the three figures sped away, down the street, dived into the darkness of an alley and were gone, past all finding, when a few startled citizens opened their windows or doors and looked out on the street to see what the awful cries of Halberd had betokened.
“I see something—down on the sidewalk,” said the voice of one of the men. “The lantern, wife, the lantern!”
“What is it? What is it?” called another, from across the way.
And others answering, that they knew not what it meant, or that it had sounded like some terrible deed being done, there were presently half a dozen awed men coming forth, when their neighbor appeared at his door with his light.
The black, still heap which had been seen from a window smote them all with horror. A dark stream, from which the light was suggestively reflected, already trickled to the gutter. They lifted Halberd from the second prostrate form and found that Adam was swiftly bleeding to death from a ghastly wound in the neck, from which the life-fluid was leaping out in gushes.