had instantly awakened. I longed to follow the advice,
for I felt something sharp catch the back of my undersuit of soft
leather, in which, for comfort, I had laid me down to sleep. But I _must_
get the candle alight. Hurrah! the flame flickered and caught at last.
"_Twang! Twang!"_ went the bows, harder at it than ever. Something
hurtled hotly through my hair--the iron bolt of an arbalest, as I knew by
the song of the steel bow in a man's hand at the end of the passage.

"Get into a doorway, man!" cried Boris, as the light revealed me.

And like a startled rabbit I ran for the nearest--that within which
Helene and the Lady Ysolinde were lying asleep. The candle, as I have
said, was set deep in a niche, which proved a great mercy for us. For our
foes, who had thought to come on us by fraud, could not now shoot it out.
Also, in relighting it, in my eagerness to save myself from the hissing
arrows behind me, I had pushed it to the very back of the shrine. I had
no weapon now but my dagger, for, in rising to relight the candle, I had
carelessly and blamefully left my sword in the straw. And I felt very
useless and foolish as I stood there to bide the assault with only a bit
of guardless knife in my hand.

Suddenly, however, there came a diversion.

"Crash !" went a gun in my very ear. Flame, smoke--much of both--and the
stifling smell of sulphur. Jorian had fired at the face of the pop-gun
knave. That putty-white countenance had a crimson plash on it ere it
vanished. Then came back to us a scream of dreadful agony and the sound
of a heavy fall outside.

"End of act the first! The Wicked Angels--hum, hum--go to hell! All in
the day's work!" cried Jorian, cheerily, recharging his pistolet and
driving home the wadding as he spoke.

It may well be imagined that during our encounter with the assailants of
the candle, whose transverse fire had so nearly finished me, the company
out in the great kitchen had not been content to lie snoring on their
backs. We could hear them creeping and whispering out there beyond the
doors; but till after the shot from the soldier's pistolet they had not
dared to show us any overt act of hostility.

Suddenly Jorian, once more facing the door, now that the passage was
clear, perceived by the rustling of the straw that it began to open
gradually. He waited till in another moment it would have been wide
enough to let in a man.

"Back there, dog, or I fire!" he bellowed. And the door was
pr