se, crowded into her mind. Yet they
moved her not so much as the dangers he ran, whom she had sent forth to
confront them, whom she had plucked from her own breast that he might
face them!

Meanwhile, Claude, after gaining the tiles, paused a moment to consider
his next step. Far below him, on the narrow, black triangle of the
Corraterie, lay the Savoyards, some three hundred in number, who had
scaled the wall. Out of the darkness of the plain, beyond and below
them, rose the faint, distant quacking of alarmed ducks, proving that
others of the enemy moved there. Even as he listened, the whirr of a
wild goose winging its flight over the city came to his ear. On his
left, with a dim oil lamp marking, here or there, the meeting of four
ways, the town slept unsuspicious, recking nothing of the fate prepared
for it.

It was a solemn moment, and Claude on the roof under the night sky, felt
it to be so. Restored to his higher self, he breathed a prayer for
guidance and for her, and was as eager now as he had before been cold.
But not the less for that did he ply the wits that, working freely in
this hour of peril, proved him one of those whom battle owns for master.
He had gathered enough, lying on his face in the bastion, to feel sure
that the forlorn hope which had gained a footing on the wall would not
move until the arrival of the main body whom it was its plan to admit by
the Porte Neuve. To carry the alarm to the Porte Neuve, therefore, and
secure that gate, seemed to be the first and most urgent step; since to
secure the Tertasse and the other inner gates would be of little avail,
if the main body of the enemy were once in possession of the ramparts.
The course that at first sight seemed the most obvious--to enter the
town, give the alarm at the town hall, and set the tocsin ringing--he
rejected; for while the town was arming, the three hundred who had
entered might seize the Porte Neuve, and so secure the entrance of the
main body.

These calculations occupied no more than a few seconds: then, his mind
made up to the course he must pursue, he crawled as quickly, but also as
quietly, as he could along the dark parapets until he gained the leads
of the Tertasse. Safe so far, he proceeded, with equal or greater
caution, to descend the narrow cork-screw staircase, that led to the
guard-room on the ground floor.

He forgot that it is more easy to ascend without noise than to descend.
With all his care he stumbled when