eeded in passing out of the staircase. Claude did
not hesitate. With a roar of rage he ran like a bull at the enemy,
struck him full under the arm with his pike, and drove him doubled up
into the stairhead, with such force that the Genevese had much ado to
free himself.

The man was struck helpless--dead for aught that appeared at the moment.
But the pike coming in contact with the edge of his corselet had not
penetrated, and Claude recovered it quickly, and levelled it in waiting
for the next comer. At the same time he adjured his comrade to secure
the fallen man's weapon. The guard seized it, and the two waited, with
suspended breath, for the sally which they were sure must come.

But the stairs were narrow, the fallen body blocked the outlet, and
possibly the assailants had expected no resistance. Finding it, they
thought better of it. A moment and they could be heard beating a
retreat.

"Pardieu! they are going!" the guard exclaimed; and he began to shake.

"Ay, but they will return!" Claude answered grimly. "Have no fear of
that! The portcullis is down, and the only way to raise it, is up these
stairs. But it will be hard if, armed as we are now, we cannot baffle
them! Has he no pistol?"

Marcadel--that was the soldier's name--felt about the prostrate man, but
found none; and bidding him listen and not move for his life--but there
was little need of the injunction--Claude passed over to the inner edge
of the roof, facing the Corraterie. Here he raised his voice and shouted
the alarm with all the force of his lungs, hoping thus to supplement the
cries which here and there had been raised by the Savoyards.

"Aux Armes! Armes!" he cried. "The enemy is at the gate! To arms! To
arms!"

A man ran out of the gateway at the sound of his shouting, levelled a
musket and fired at him. The slugs flew wide, and Claude, lifted above
himself, yelled defiance, knowing that the more shots were fired the
more quickly and widely would the alarm be spread.

That it was spreading, that it was being taken up, his position on the
gateway enabled him to discern, distant as the Porte Neuve lay from the
heart of the town. A flare of light at the rear of the Tertasse, and a
confused hub-bub in that quarter, seemed to show that, though the
Savoyards had seized the gate, they had not penetrated beyond it. Away
on his extreme left, where the Porte de la Monnaye, hard by his old
bastion, overlooked the Rhone and the island, were lights