o escape that way, he would not have waited
till the men were in the room. Martin saw that at once, and left the
door, and came to the foot-stair and listened.

He began to think Gerard must have escaped by the window while all the
men were in the house. The longer the silence continued, the stronger
grew this conviction. But it was suddenly and rudely dissipated.

Faint cries issued from the inner bedroom--Margaret's.

"They have taken him," groaned Martin; "they have got him."

It now flashed across Martin's mind that if they took Gerard away, his
life was not worth a button; and that, if evil befell him, Margaret's
heart would break. He cast his eyes wildly round like some savage beast
seeking an escape, and in a twinkling formed a resolution terribly
characteristic of those iron times and of a soldier driven to bay. He
stepped to each door in turn, and imitating Dierich Brower's voice,
said sharply, "Watch the window!" He then quietly closed and bolted
both doors. He then took up his bow and six arrows; one he fitted to his
string, the others he put into his quiver. His knife he placed upon a
chair behind him, the hilt towards him; and there he waited at the foot
of the stair with the calm determination to slay those four men, or be
slain by them. Two, he knew, he could dispose of by his arrows, ere
they could get near him, and Gerard and he must take their chance
hand-to-hand with the remaining pair. Besides, he had seen men
panic-stricken by a sudden attack of this sort. Should Brower and his
men hesitate but an instant before closing with him, he should shoot
three instead of two, and then the odds would be on the right side.

He had not long to wait. The heavy steps sounded in Margaret's room, and
came nearer and nearer.

The light also approached, and voices.

Martin's heart, stout as it was, beat hard, to hear men coming thus to
their death, and perhaps to his; more likely so than not: for four is
long odds in a battlefield of ten feet square, and Gerard might be bound
perhaps, and powerless to help. But this man, whom we have seen shake in
his shoes at a Giles-o'-lanthorn, never wavered in this awful moment of
real danger, but stood there, his body all braced for combat, and his
eye glowing, equally ready to take life and lose it. Desperate game! to
win which was exile instant and for life, and to lose it was to die that
moment upon that floor he stood on.

Dierich Brower and his men found Peter in