ont, big drum ahead, drenched, hot, and
hoarse, but supremely happy.

Sir Percy looked up for a moment as the noise drew neared, then turned
to Chauvelin and pointing to the letter, he said:

"I have nearly finished!"

The suspense in the smoke-laden atmosphere of this room was becoming
unendurable, and four hearts at least were beating wildly with
overpowering anxiety. Marguerite's eyes were fixed with tender intensity
on the man she so passionately loved. She did not understand his actions
or his motives, but she felt a wild longing in her, to drink in every
line of that loved face, as if with this last, long look she was bidding
an eternal farewell to all hopes of future earthly happiness.

The old priest had ceased to tell his beads. Feeling in his kindly heart
the echo of the appalling tragedy which was being enacted before him, he
had put out a fatherly, tentative hand towards Marguerite, and given her
icy fingers a comforting pressure.

And in the hearts of Chauvelin and his colleague there was satisfied
revenge, eager, exultant triumph and that terrible nerve-tension which
immediately precedes the long-expected climax.

But who can say what went on within the heart of that bold adventurer,
about to be brought to the lowest depths of humiliation which it is in
the power of man to endure? What behind that smooth unruffled brow still
bent laboriously over the page of writing?

The crowd was now on the Place Daumont; some of the foremost in
the ranks were ascending the stone steps which lead to the southern
ramparts. The noise had become incessant: Pierrots and Pierrettes,
Harlequins and Columbines had worked themselves up into a veritable
intoxication of shouts and laughter.

Now as they all swarmed up the steps and caught sight of the open window
almost on a level with the ground, and of the large dimly-lighted room,
they gave forth one terrific and voluminous "Hurrah!" for the paternal
government up in Paris, who had given them cause for all this joy. Then
they recollected how the amnesty, the pardon, the national fete, this
brilliant procession had come about, and somebody in the crowd shouted:

"Allons! les us have a look at that English spy!..."

"Let us see the Scarlet Pimpernel!"

"Yes! yes! let us see what he is like!"

They shouted and stamped and swarmed round the open window, swinging
their lanthorns and demanding in a loud tone of voice that the English
spy be shown to them.

Faces wet w