onger rope and the crowbar. Do not miss them. If we find
ourselves without them, on that narrow ledge of rock, we shall either
be compelled to deliver ourselves up, or throw ourselves down the
precipice. I shall not be long in joining you. Are you ready?"

M. d'Escorval lifted his arms, the rope was fastened securely about him,
and he crawled through the window.

From there the height seemed immense. Below, in the barren fields that
surrounded the citadel, eight persons were waiting, silent, anxious,
breathless.

They were Mme. d'Escorval and Maurice, Marie-Anne, Abbe Midon, and the
four retired army officers.

There was no moon; but the night was very clear, and they could see the
tower quite plainly.

Soon after four o'clock sounded they saw a dark object glide slowly down
the side of the tower--it was the baron. After a little, another form
followed very rapidly--it was Bavois.

Half of the perilous journey was accomplished.

From below, they could see the two figures moving about on the narrow
platform. The corporal and the baron were exerting all their strength to
fix the crowbar securely in a crevice of the rock.

In a moment or two one of the figures stepped from the projecting rock
and glided gently down the side of the precipice.

It could be none other than M. d'Escorval. Transported with happiness,
his wife sprang forward with open arms to receive him.

Wretched woman! A terrific cry rent the still night air.

M. d'Escorval was falling from a height of fifty feet; he was hurled
down to the foot of the rocky precipice. The rope had parted.

Had it broken naturally?

Maurice, who examined the end of it, exclaimed with horrible
imprecations of hatred and vengeance that they had been betrayed--that
their enemy had arranged to deliver only a dead body into their
hands--that the rope, in short, had been foully tampered with--cut!

CHAPTER XXXI

Chupin had not taken time to sleep, nor scarcely time to drink, since
that unfortunate morning when the Duc de Sairmeuse ordered affixed
to the walls of Montaignac, that decree in which he promised twenty
thousand francs to the person who should deliver up Lacheneur, dead or
alive.

"Twenty thousand francs," Chupin muttered gloomily; "twenty sacks with a
hundred pistoles in each! Ah! if I could discover Lacheneur; even if
he were dead and buried a hundred feet under ground, I should gain the
reward."

The appellation of traitor, which he would recei