hurled her from him with a violence he
nowise intended.

"Yours, madame, are the first woman's arms that ever Martin de Garnache
has known," said he. "And never could embrace of beauty have been less
welcome."

Panting, he caught up one of the overturned chairs. Holding it by the
back he made for the window. He had dropped his sword, and he called
to mademoiselle to hold the captain yet an instant longer. He swung his
chair aloft and dashed it against the window. There was a thundering
crash of shivered glass and a cool draught of that November night came
to sweeten the air that had been fouled by the stamping of the fighters.

Again he swung up his chair and dashed it at the window, and yet again,
until no window remained, but a great, gaping opening with a fringe of
ragged glass and twisted leadwork.

In that moment Fortunio struggled to his feet, free of the girl, who
sank, almost in a swoon. He sprang towards Garnache. The Parisian turned
and flung his now shattered chair toward the advancing captain. It
dropped at his feet, and his flying shins struck against an edge of
it, bringing him, hurt and sprawling, to the ground. Before he could
recover, a figure was flying through the open gap that lately had been a
window.

Mademoiselle sat up and screamed.

"You will be killed, Monsieur de Garnache! Dear God, you will be
killed!" and the anguish in her voice was awful.

It was the last thing that reached the ears of Monsieur de Garnache as
he tumbled headlong through the darkness of the chill November night.

CHAPTER XVIII. IN THE MOAT

Fortunio and the Marquise reached the window side by side, and they were
in time to hear a dull splash in the waters fifty feet below them. There
was a cloud over the little sickle of moon, and to their eyes, fresh
from the blaze of candle-light, the darkness was impenetrable.

"He is in the moat," cried the Marquise excitedly, and Valerie, who sat
on the floor whither she had slipped when Fortunio shook her off, rocked
herself in an agony of fear.

To the horrors about her--the huddled bodies lying so still upon the
floor, the bloody footprints everywhere, the shattered furniture,
and the groans of the man with the wounded thigh--to all this she was
insensible. Garnache was dead, she told herself; he was surely dead; and
it seemed as if the very thought of it were killing, too, a part of her
own self.

Unconsciously she sobbed her fears aloud. "He is dead," she moa