ght call for help.

He marvelled as the thought occurred to him that the clatter of their
blades had not drawn his servants from their quarters. Fencing still, he
raised his voice:

"Ho, there! John, Stephen!"

"Spare your breath," growled the knight. "I dare swear you'll have need
of it. None will hear you, call as you will. I gave your four henchmen
a flagon of wine wherein to drink to my safe journey hence. They have
emptied it ere this, I make no doubt, and a single glass of it would set
the hardest toper asleep for the round of the clock."

An oath was Joseph's only answer--a curse it was upon his own folly and
assurance. A little while ago he had thought to have drawn so tight
a net about this ruler, and here was he now taken in its very toils,
well-nigh exhausted and in his enemy's power.

It occurred to him then that Crispin stayed his hand. That he fenced
only on the defensive, and he wondered what might his motive be. He
realized that he was mastered, and that at any moment Galliard might
send home his blade. He was bathed from head to foot in a sweat that was
at once of exertion and despair. A frenzy seized him. Might he not yet
turn to advantage this hesitancy of Crispin's to strike the final blow?

He braced himself for a supreme effort, and turning his wrist from a
simulated thrust in the first position, he doubled, and stretching out,
lunged vigorously in quarte. As he lengthened his arm in the stroke
there came a sudden twitch at his wrist; the weapon was twisted from his
grasp, and he stood disarmed at Crispin's mercy.

A gurgling cry broke despite him from his lips, and his eyes grew wide
in a sickly terror as they encountered the knight's sinister glance. Not
three paces behind him was the wall, and on it, within the hand's easy
reach, hung many a trophied weapon that might have served him then. But
the fascination of fear was upon him, benumbing his wits and paralysing
his limbs, with the thought that the next pulsation of his tumultuous
heart would prove its last. The calm, unflinching courage that had
been Joseph's only virtue was shattered, and his iron will that had
unscrupulously held hitherto his very conscience in bondage was turned
to water now that he stood face to face with death.

Eons of time it seemed to him were sped since the sword was wrenched
from his hand, and still the stroke he awaited came not; still Crispin
stood, sinister and silent before him, watching him with magneti