no man but the
colossus he had seen in passing through the kitchen. It made the place
vibrate. The quarrelling continued some time, and then there was a dead
silence.

"Look out, Gerard."

"Ay. What will they do next?"

"We shall soon know."

"Shall I wait for you, or cut down the first that opens the door?"

"Wait for me, lest we strike the same and waste a blow. Alas! we cannot
afford that."

Dead silence.

Sudden came into the room a thing that made them start and their hearts
quiver.

And what was it? A moonbeam.

Even so can this machine, the body, by the soul's action, be strung
up to start and quiver. The sudden ray shot keen and pure into that
shamble.

Its calm, cold, silvery soul traversed the apartment in a stream of no
great volume, for the window was narrow.

After the first tremor Gerard whispered, "Courage, Denys! God's eye
is on us even here." And he fell upon his knees with his face turned
towards the window.

Ay it was like a holy eye opening suddenly on human crime and human
passions. Many a scene of blood and crime that pure cold eye had rested
on; but on few more ghastly than this, where two men, with a lighted
corpse between them, waited panting, to kill and be killed. Nor did the
moonlight deaden that horrible corpse-light. If anything it added to
its ghastliness: for the body sat at the edge of the moonbeam, which cut
sharp across the shoulder and the ear, and seemed blue and ghastly and
unnatural by the side of that lurid glow in which the face and eyes and
teeth shone horribly. But Denys dared not look that way.

The moon drew a broad stripe of light across the door, and on that his
eyes were glued. Presently he whispered, "Gerard!"

Gerard looked and raised his sword.

Acutely as they had listened, they had heard of late no sound on
the stair. Yet therein the door-post, at the edge of the stream of
moonlight, were the tips of the fingers of a hand.

The nails glistened.

Presently they began to crawl and crawl down towards the bolt, but
with infinite slowness and caution. In so doing they crept into the
moonlight. The actual motion was imperceptible, but slowly, slowly,
the fingers came out whiter and whiter; but the hand between the main
knuckles and the wrist remained dark.

Denys slowly raised his crossbow.

He levelled it. He took a long steady aim.

Gerard palpitated. At last the crossbow twanged. The hand was instantly
nailed, with a stern jar, to the quiveri