rgy, he tore himself from them, and, producing
something from one of his pockets, he held it menacingly up.

"Advance a step," he exclaimed, "and I will blow you all to atoms,
myself as well. Beware! I hold all our lives in my hand. Now who dares
advance?"

CHAPTER XCIII.

LENOIR'S FLIGHT--MURRAY THE TRAITOR--HIS PUNISHMENT AND FLIGHT--A LONG
RUN--THE AUBERGE--A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE.

There was a pause.

Pierre Lenoir looked like mischief.

His position was desperate, and they judged, and rightly judged, that
he was a man not likely to stick at a trifle.

The men looked at their officer, and the latter, a man of intelligence
and prudence, albeit no coward, reflected seriously.

Several terrible calamities, accidental and intentional, had of late
opened the eyes of the public to the destructive properties of
dynamite, and to that his thoughts flew.

He wavered.

The coiner saw his chance, and quick to act as to think, he made for
the exit.

"Stand back!" he cried, fiercely, to the men who made a faint show of
barring his passage. "I'll finish you all off at a stroke if you
attempt to oppose me?"

They fell back alarmed.

Lenoir darted on through the inner vault, and so on until he gained the
flight of steps.

Reaching the top, he darted through the cottage, and reaching the open,
suddenly found himself in the midst of about a dozen men.

The first person upon whom his glance rested, was the doubly-dyed
traitor who had betrayed him solely to serve his own ends, by
entrapping Jack Harkaway--the Englishman, who must have been recognized
by the reader, in spite of his assumed name, as Herbert Murray.

Instinctively Lenoir divined that his betrayer was the young
Englishman.

No sooner did this conclusion force itself upon him than all thought of
personal danger vanished from his mind, and he was possessed by one
sole idea, one single desire. Revenge!

He lost sight of the peril in which he ran, but with a cry like the
roar of a wounded lion he sprang upon the traitor.

A brawny, powerful fellow was Pierre Lenoir, and Herbert Murray was but
a puny thing in his grasp.

"Hands off!" exclaimed Murray, in desperation.

Lenoir growled, but said nothing, as he shook him much as a terrier
does a rat.

Before the police could interfere in the spy's behalf, Lenoir held him
with one hand at arm's length, while with the other he prepared to
deliver a fearful blow.

The energy of despair seized on