ughout Boulogne.

Chauvelin was livid with rage, fear and baffled revenge. He made a
sudden rush for the door in a blind desire to call for help, but Sir
Percy had toyed long enough with his prey. The hour was speeding on:
Hebert and some of the soldiers might return, and it was time to think
of safety and of flight. Quick as a hunted panther, he had interposed
his tall figure between his enemy and the latter's chance of calling for
aid, then, seizing the little man by the shoulders, he pushed him back
into that portion of the room where Marguerite and the Abbe Foucquet had
been lately sitting.

The gag, with cloth and cord, which had been intended for a woman were
lying on the ground close by, just where Hebert had dropped them, when
he marched the old Abbe off to the Church.

With quick and dexterous hands, Sir Percy soon reduced Chauvelin to
an impotent and silent bundle. The ex-ambassador after four days of
harrowing nerve-tension, followed by so awful a climax, was weakened
physically and mentally, whilst Blakeney, powerful, athletic and always
absolutely unperturbed, was fresh in body and spirit. He had slept
calmly all the afternoon, having quietly thought out all his plans, left
nothing to chance, and acted methodically and quickly, and invariably
with perfect repose.

Having fully assured himself that the cords were well fastened, the gag
secure and Chauvelin completely helpless, he took the now inert mass up
in his arms and carried it into the adjoining room, where Marguerite for
twelve hours had endured a terrible martyrdom.

He laid his enemy's helpless form upon the couch, and for one moment
looked down on it with a strange feeling of pity quite unmixed with
contempt. The light from the lamp in the further room struck vaguely
upon the prostrate figure of Chauvelin. He seemed to have lost
consciousness, for the eyes were closed, only the hands, which were tied
securely to his body, had a spasmodic, nervous twitch in them.

With a good-natured shrug of the shoulders the imperturbable Sir Percy
turned to go, but just before he did so, he took a scrap of paper from
his waistcoat pocket, and slipped it between Chauvelin's trembling
fingers. On the paper were scribbled the four lines of verse which in
the next four and twenty hours Robespierre himself and his colleagues
would read.

Then Blakeney finally went out of the room.

Chapter XXXV: Marguerite

As he re-entered the large room, she was