stplates gleaming red. "We are saved! Armed men!" And
he dashed his sword through the window shouting, "Quick! quick! we are
sore pressed."

"Back!" yelled Denys; "they come! strike none but him!"

That very moment the Abbot and two men with naked weapons rushed into
the room. Even as they came, the outer door was hammered fiercely, and
the Abbot's comrades hearing it, and seeing the torchlight, turned and
fled. Not so the terrible Abbot: wild with rage and pain, he spurned his
dead comrade, chair and all, across the room, then, as the men faced him
on each side with kindling eyeballs, he waved his tremendous axe like a
feather right and left, and cleared a space, then lifted it to hew them
both in pieces.

His antagonists were inferior in strength, but not in swiftness and
daring, and above all they had settled how to attack him. The moment
he reared his axe, they flew at him like cats, and both together. If he
struck a full blow with his weapon he would most likely kill one, but
the other would certainly kill him: he saw this, and intelligent as
well as powerful, he thrust the handle fiercely in Denys's face, and,
turning, jobbed with the steel at Gerard. Denys went staggering back
covered with blood. Gerard had rushed in like lightning, and, just as
the axe turned to descend on him, drove his sword so fiercely through
the giant's body, that the very hilt sounded on his ribs like the blow
of a pugilist, and Denys, staggering back to help his friend, saw a
steel point come out of the Abbot behind.

The stricken giant bellowed like a bull, dropped his axe, and clutching
Gerard's throat tremendously, shook him like a child. Then Denys with
a fierce snarl drove his sword into the giant's back. "Stand firm now!"
and he pushed the cold steel through and through the giant and out at
his breast.

Thus horribly spitted on both sides, the Abbot gave a violent shudder,
and his heels hammered the ground convulsively. His lips, fast turning
blue, opened wide and deep, and he cried, "LA MORT!-LA MORT!-LA MORT!!"
the first time in a roar of despair, and then twice in a horror-stricken
whisper, never to be forgotten.

Just then the street door was forced.

Suddenly the Abbot's arms whirled like windmills, and his huge body
wrenched wildly and carried them to the doorway, twisting their wrists
and nearly throwing them off their legs.

"He'll win clear yet," cried Denys: "out steel! and in again!"

They tore out their smokin