him
rise. A moment later another gripped him, but Claude and he fell
together, and the younger man, rolling nimbly sideways, got clear and to
his feet again, made for the wall on his right, turned left again, and
already thought himself over the threshold of the Porte Neuve. The cry
"Aux Armes! Aux Armes!" was already on his lips, he thought he had
succeeded, when between his eyes and the faintly lighted gateway a
dozen forms rose as by magic and poured in before him--so near to him
that, unable to check himself, he jostled the hindmost.

He might have entered with them, so near was he. But he saw that he was
too late; he guessed that the outcry behind him had precipitated the
attack, and, arresting himself outside the ring of light, but within a
few paces of the gateway, he threw himself on the ground and awaited the
event. It was not long in declaring itself. For a few seconds a dull
roar of shots and shouts and curses filled the gate. Then out again,
helter-skelter, with a flash of exploding powder and a whirl of steel
and blows, came defenders and assailants in a crowd, the former bent on
escaping, the latter on cutting them off from the Porte Tertasse and the
town. For an instant after they had poured out the gate seemed quiet,
and with his eyes upon it, Claude rose, first to his knees and then to
his feet, paused a moment in doubt, then darted in and entered the
guard-room.

The firelight--the other lights in the small, dingy chamber had been
trampled under foot--showed him two wounded men groaning on the floor,
and the body of a third who lay apparently dead. Claude bent over one,
found what he wanted--a half-pike--and glided to the door of the stairs
that led to the roof. It was in the same position as in the Tertasse. He
opened it, passed through it, mounted two steps, and in the darkness
came plump against some one who seized him by the throat.

The man had no weapon--at any rate he did not strike; and Claude, taken
by surprise, could not level his pike in the narrow stairway. For a
moment they wrestled, Claude striving to bring his weapon to bear on his
foe, the latter trying to strangle him. But the advantage of the stairs
lay with the first comer, who was the uppermost, and gradually he bore
Claude back and back. The young man, however, would not let go such hold
as he had, and both were on the point of falling out on the floor of the
guard-room when the light disclosed Claude's face.

"You are of us!"