s heart melted. But
he had not long to dwell on her peril; not long to dwell on anything.
Before the great bell had hurled its warning abroad three times he had
to go. Marcadel's voice, urgent, insistent, summoned him to the
stairhead.

"They are mustering at the bottom!" the man whispered over his shoulder.
He was on his knees, his head in the hood of the staircase. The wounded
man, breathing stertorously, still cumbered the upper steps. Marcadel
rested one hand on him.

Claude thrust in his head and listened. He could hear, above the thick
breathing of the Savoyard, the stir of men muttering and moving in the
darkness below; and now the stealthy shuffle of feet, and again the
faint clang of a weapon against the wall. Doubtless it had dawned on
some one in command below, that here on this tower lay the keys of
Geneva: that by themselves three hundred men could not take, nor hold if
they took, a town manned by five or six thousand; consequently that if
Savoy would succeed in the enterprise so boldly begun, she must by hook
or crook raise this portcullis and open this gate. As a fact,
Brunaulieu, the captain of the forlorn hope, had passed the word that
the tower must be taken at any cost; and had come himself from the Porte
Tertasse, where a brisk conflict was beginning, to see the thing done.

Claude did not know this, but had he known it, it would not have reduced
his courage.

"Yes, I hear them," he whispered in answer to the soldier's words. "But
they have not mounted far yet. And when they come, if two pikes cannot
hold this doorway which they can pass but one at a time, there is no
truth in Thermopylae!"

"I know naught of that," the other answered, rising nervously to his
feet. "I don't favour heights. Give me the lee of a wall and fair
odds----"

"Odds?" Claude echoed vain-gloriously--but only the stars attended to
him--"I would not have another man!"

Marcadel seized him by the sleeve. His voice rose almost to a scream.
"But, by Heaven, there is another man!" he cried. "There!" He pointed
with a shaking hand to the outer corner of the leads, in the
neighbourhood of the place where the winch of the portcullis stood. "We
are betrayed! We are dead men!" he babbled.

Claude made out a dim figure, crouching against the battlement; and the
thought, which was also in Marcadel's mind, that the enemy had set a
ladder against the wall and outflanked them, rendered him desperate. At
any rate there was but one o