one minute to make up your mind," said Guillaume, dropping
his tone of sarcastic pleasantry, and speaking in a hard, sharp voice.
"After that, either you give me the papers, or you get up and march
before me to the village."

"If I refuse to do either?"

"You can't refuse," said Guillaume.

"You mean--?"

"I should order you to hold your hands behind your back while I took
the papers. If you moved--"

"Thank you. I see," said the Captain, with a nod of understanding.
"Awkward for you, though, if it came to that."

"Oh, I think not very, in view of your dealings with my portfolio."

"I 'm in a devil of a hole," admitted the Captain, candidly.

"Time's up," announced M. Guillaume, slowly raising the barrel of his
revolver, and taking aim at the Captain. For the candle still burnt,
although dimly and fitfully, and still there was light to guide the
bullet on its way.

"It's all up!" said the Captain. "But, deuce take it, it's hardly the
way to treat a gentleman!" Even as he spoke the light of the candle
towered for a second in a last shoot of flame, and then went out.

At the same moment the Captain rolled down the incline of straw on
which he had been resting, rose on his knees an instant, seized the
truss and flung it at Guillaume, rolled under the next truss, seized
that in like manner and propelled it against the enemy, and darted
again to shelter. "Stop, or I fire," cried Guillaume; he was as good
as his word the next minute, but the third truss caught him just as he
aimed, and his bullet flew against and was buried in the planking of
the roof. By now, the Captain was escaping from under the fourth
truss, and making for the fifth. Guillaume, dimly seeing the fourth
truss not thrown, but left in its place, discharged another shot at it.
The fifth truss caught him in the side and drove him against the wooden
block. He turned swiftly in the direction whence the missile came, and
fired again. He was half dazed, his eyes and ears seemed full of the
dust of the straw. He fired once again at random, swearing savagely;
and before he could recover aim his arm was seized from behind, his
neck was caught in a vigorous garotte, and he fell on the floor of the
hut with Captain Dieppe on the top of him--Dieppe, dusty, dirty,
panting, bleeding freely from a bullet graze on the top of the left
ear, and with one leg of his trousers slit from ankle to knee by a
rusty nail, that had also ploughed a nasty furrow u