wered the portcullis?"
Blandano gasped, as he leaned an instant on his sword.

"He did," Marcadel answered, laying his hand on Claude's shoulder. "And
I helped him."

"Then he has saved Geneva, and you have helped him!" Blandano rejoined
bluntly. "Your name, young man."

Claude told him.

"Good!" Blandano answered. "If I live to see the morning light, it shall
not be forgotten!"

Baudichon leant across the dead, and shook Claude's hand. "For the women
and children!" he said, his fat face shaking like a jelly; though no man
had fought that night with a more desperate valour. "If I live to see
the morning inquire for Baudichon of the council."

Jehan Brosse, the bandy-legged tailor with the huge sword--he was but
five feet high and no one up to that night had known him for a
hero--squared his shoulders and looked at Claude, as one who takes
another under his protection. "Baudichon the councillor, whom all men
know in Geneva," he said with an affectionate look at the great man--he
was proud of the company to which his prowess had raised him. "You will
not forget the name! no fear of that! And now on!"

"Ay, on!" Blandano answered, looking round on his panting followers, of
whom some were staunching their wounds and some, with dark faces and
gleaming eyeballs, were loading and priming their arms. "But I think
the worst is over and we shall win through now. We have this gate safe,
and it is the key, as I told you. If all be well elsewhere, and the main
guards be held----"

"Ay, but are they?" Baudichon muttered nervously: he reeled a little,
for the loss of blood was beginning to tell upon him. "That is the
question!"

CHAPTER XXV.

BASTERGA AT ARGOS.

The fear that Blandano might postpone the night-round, to a time which
would involve discovery, haunted Blondel; and late on this eventful
evening he despatched Louis, as we have seen, to the Porte Neuve to
remind the Captain of his orders. That done--it was all he could do--the
Syndic sat down in his great chair, and prepared himself to wait. He
knew that he had before him some hours of uncertainty almost
intolerable; and a peril, a hundred times more hard to face, because in
the pinch of it he must play two parts; he must run with the hare and
hunt with the hounds, and, a traitor standing forward for the city he
had betrayed, he must have an eye to his reputation as well as his life.

He had no doubt of the success of Savoy, the walls once passed.
Mo