d never have felt, in all my days. As I turned, a
dagger flashed before my eyes, and I felt the cold wind of it pass my
neck and the villain's wrist jar upon my shoulder. I shortened my sword,
but he winced away from me, and an instant afterwards was in full
flight, bounding like a deer across the glade in the moonlight.

But he was not to escape me thus. I knew that the murderer's poniard
had done its work. Young as I was, I had seen enough of war to know a
mortal blow. I paused but for an instant to touch the cold hand.

'Sire! Sire!' I cried, in an agony; and then as no sound came back and
nothing moved, save an ever-widening dark circle in the moonlight, I
knew that all was indeed over. I sprang madly to my feet, threw off my
great-coat, and ran at the top of my speed after the remaining assassin.

Ah, how I blessed the wisdom which had caused me to come in shoes and
gaiters! And the happy thought which had thrown off my coat. He could
not get rid of his mantle, this wretch, or else he was too frightened to
think of it. So it was that I gained upon him from the beginning. He
must have been out of his wits, for he never tried to bury himself in
the darker parts of the woods, but he flew on from glade to glade, until
he came to the heath-land which leads up to the great Fontainebleau
quarry. There I had him in full sight, and knew that he could not escape
me. He ran well, it is true--ran as a coward runs when his life is the
stake. But I ran as Destiny runs when it gets behind a man's heels. Yard
by yard I drew in upon him. He was rolling and staggering. I could hear
the rasping and crackling of his breath. The great gulf of the quarry
suddenly yawned in front of his path, and glancing at me over his
shoulder, he gave a shriek of despair. The next instant he had vanished
from my sight.

Vanished utterly, you understand. I rushed to the spot, and gazed down
into the black abyss. Had he hurled himself over? I had almost made up
my mind that he had done so, when a gentle sound rising and falling came
out of the darkness beneath me. It was his breathing once more, and it
showed me where he must be. He was hiding in the tool-house.

At the edge of the quarry and beneath the summit there is a small
platform upon which stands a wooden hut for the use of the labourers.
It was into this, then, that he had darted. Perhaps he had thought, the
fool, that, in the darkness, I would not venture to follow him. He
little knew Etie