ed from all place in the world that he had led,
and been caressed by and beguiled with for so long.

To-night, at this hour, he should have been among all that was highest
and gayest and fairest in Europe at the banquet of a Prince--and he went
by his captor's side, a convicted criminal.

Once out in the air, the Hebrew laid his hand on his arm. He started--it
was the first sign that his liberty was gone! He restrained himself from
all resistance still, and passed onward, down where Baroni motioned him
out of the noise of the carriages, out of the glare of the light, into
the narrow, darkened turning of a side street. He went passively; for
this man trusted to his honor.

In the gloom stood three figures, looming indistinctly in the shadow
of the houses. One was a Huissier of the Staats-Procurator, beside whom
stood the Commissary of Police of the district; the third was an English
detective. Ere he saw them their hands were on his shoulders, and the
cold chill of steel touched his wrists. The Hebrew had betrayed him, and
arrested him in the open street. In an instant, as the ring of the rifle
rouses the slumbering tiger, all the life and the soul that were in him
rose in revolt as the icy glide of the handcuffs sought their hold on
his arms. In an instant, all the wild blood of his race, all the pride
of his breeding, all the honor of his service, flashed into fire and
leaped into action. Trusted, he would have been true to his accuser;
deceived, the chains of his promise were loosened, and all he thought,
all he felt, all he knew were the lion impulses, the knightly instincts,
the resolute choice to lose life rather than to lose freedom, of a
soldier and a gentleman. All he remembered was that he would fight to
the death rather than be taken alive; that they should kill him where he
stood, in the starlight, rather than lead him in the sight of men as a
felon.

With the strength that lay beneath all the gentle languor of his habits
and with the science of the Eton Playing Fields of his boyhood, he
wrenched his wrists free ere the steel had closed, and with the single
straightening of his left arm felled the detective to earth like a
bullock, with a crashing blow that sounded through the stillness like
some heavy timber stove in; flinging himself like lightning on the
Huissier, he twisted out of his grasp the metal weight of the handcuffs,
and wrestling with him was woven for a second in that close-knit
struggle whi