And with a leap he was after him, in his headlong course dashing to the ground some other unseen person who confronted him in the hall.
In a moment more he had caught the tall man by the collar and swung him impetuously round back within the doorway.
"Move one sole inch and your blood be on your own head!" he muttered. And the captive feeling Rollo's steel cold at his throat, remained prudently silent. Not so the lady without. She uttered a cry which rang about the silent château.
"Muñoz! My husband! Fernando, where art thou? Oh, they have slain him, and I only am to blame!"
She turned about and rushed back to the door, which she was about to enter, when a cry far more sudden and terrible rang out behind her.
"They have killed the Princess! Some one hath slain my darling!"
At the word Rollo abandoned the man whom he was holding down, and with shouts of "Cardono!" "El Sarria!" "To me! They are upon us!" he flung himself outside.
There was little to be discerned clearly when he emerged into the cool damp darkness, only a dim heap of writhing bodies as in some combat of hounds or of the denizens of the midnight forest. But Rollo once and again saw a flash of steel and a hand uplifted to strike. Without waiting to think he gripped that which was topmost and therefore nearest to him, and finding it unexpectedly light, he swung the thing clear by the garment he had clutched. As he did so he felt a pain in his right shoulder, which at the time appeared no more than the bite of a squirrel or the sting of a bee. With one heave he threw the object, human or not he could not for the moment determine, behind him into the blackness of the hall.
"Take hold there, somebody!" he cried, for by this time he could hear the clattering of the feet of his followers on the stairs and flagged passages.
Outside under the stars something or some one larger and heavier lay on the ground and moaned. As Rollo bent over it there came a rush of men from all sides, and the young man had scarcely time to straighten himself up and draw his pistol before he found himself attacked by half a dozen men.