sy mutterings were heard below, and at last a deep voice
said, "What makes him so long? is the drole rifling them?"

It was their comrade they suspected then, not the enemy. Soon a step
came softly but rapidly up the stairs: the door was gently tried.

When this resisted, which was clearly not expected, the sham post was
very cautiously moved, and an eye no doubt peeped through the aperture:
for there was a howl of dismay, and the man was heard to stumble back
and burst into the kitchen, here a Babel of voices rose directly on his
return.

Gerard ran to the dead thief and began to work on him again.

"Back, madman!" whispered Denys.

"Nay, nay. I know these ignorant brutes; they will not venture here
awhile. I can make him ten times more fearful."

"At least close that opening! Let them not see you at your devilish
work."

Gerard closed the sham post, and in half a minute his brush gave the
dead head a sight to strike any man with dismay. He put his art to a
strange use, and one unparalleled perhaps in the history of mankind.
He illuminated his dead enemy's face to frighten his living foe: the
staring eyeballs he made globes of fire; the teeth he left white, for
so they were more terrible by the contrast; but the palate and tongue
he tipped with fire, and made one lurid cavern of the red depths the
chapfallen jaw revealed: and on the brow he wrote in burning letters
"La Mort." And, while he was doing it, the stout Denys was quaking, and
fearing the vengeance of Heaven; for one mans courage is not another's;
and the band of miscreants below were quarrelling and disputing loudly,
and now without disguise.

The steps that led down to the kitchen were fifteen, but they were
nearly perpendicular: there was therefore in point of fact no distance
between the besiegers and besieged, and the latter now caught almost
every word. At last one was heard to cry out, "I tell ye the devil has
got him and branded him with hellfire. I am more like to leave this
cursed house than go again into a room that is full of fiends."

"Art drunk? or mad? or a coward?" said another.

"Call me a coward, I'll give thee my dagger's point, and send thee where
Pierre sits o' fire for ever.

"Come, no quarrelling when work is afoot," roared a tremendous diapason,
"or I'll brain ye both with my fist, and send ye where we shall all go
soon or late."

"The Abbot," whispered Denys gravely.

He felt the voice he had just heard could belong to