d be easy enough, as they were not precipitous, and the
great boulders afforded plenty of foothold. Suddenly, as she grazed,
she saw at some little distance on her left, and about midway down the
cliffs, a rough wooden construction, through the wall of which a tiny
red light glimmered like a beacon. Her very heart seemed to stand still,
the eagerness of joy was so great that it felt like an awful pain.

She could not gauge how distant the hut was, but without hesitation
she began the steep descent, creeping from boulder to boulder, caring
nothing for the enemy behind, or for the soldiers, who evidently had all
taken cover since the tall Englishman had not yet appeared.

On she pressed, forgetting the deadly foe on her track, running,
stumbling, foot-sore, half-dazed, but still on . . . When, suddenly, a
crevice, or stone, or slippery bit of rock, threw her violently to the
ground. She struggled again to her feet, and started running forward
once more to give them that timely warning, to beg them to flee before
he came, and to tell him to keep away--away from this death-trap--away
from this awful doom. But now she realised that other steps, quicker
than her own, were already close at her heels. The next instant a
hand dragged at her skirt, and she was down on her knees again, whilst
something was wound round her mouth to prevent her uttering a scream.

Bewildered, half frantic with the bitterness of disappointment, she
looked round her helplessly, and, bending down quite close to her, she
saw through the mist, which seemed to gather round her, a pair of keen,
malicious eyes, which appeared to her excited brain to have a weird,
supernatural green light in them. She lay in the shadow of a great
boulder; Chauvelin could not see her features, but he passed his thin,
white fingers over her face.

"A woman!" he whispered, "by all the Saints in the calendar."

"We cannot let her loose, that's certain," he muttered to himself. "I
wonder now . . ."

Suddenly he paused, after a few moment of deadly silence, he gave forth
a long, low, curious chuckle, while once again Marguerite felt, with a
horrible shudder, his thin fingers wandering over her face.

"Dear me! dear me!" he whispered, with affected gallantry, "this is
indeed a charming surprise," and Marguerite felt her resistless hand
raised to Chauvelin's thin, mocking lips.

The situation was indeed grotesque, had it not been at the same time
so fearfully tragic: the poo