Count Hannibal

The sound she uttered was low, but it reached the men's ears, and the two

whose backs were towards her turned as if they had been pricked. He who

held the lanthorn raised it, and the five glared at her and she at them.

Then a second cry, louder and more full of surprise, burst from her lips.

The nearest man, he who held the lanthorn high that he might view her,

was Tignonville, was her lover!

"Mon Dieu!" she whispered. "What is it? What is it?"

Then, not till then, did he know her. Until then the light of the

lanthorn had revealed only a cloaked and cowled figure, a gloomy phantom

which shook the heart of more than one with superstitious terror. But

they knew her now--two of them; and slowly, as in a dream, Tignonville

came forward.

The mind has its moments of crisis, in which it acts upon instinct rather

than upon reason. The girl never knew why she acted as she did; why she

asked no questions, why she uttered no exclamations, no remonstrances;

why, with a finger on her lips and her eyes on his, she put the packet

into his hands.

He took it from her, too, as mechanically as she gave it--with the hand

which held his bare blade. That done, silent as she, with his eyes set

hard, he would have gone by her. The sight of her there, guarding the

door of him who had stolen her from him, exasperated his worst passions.

But she moved to hinder him, and barred the way. With her hand raised

she pointed to the trapdoor.

"Go!" she whispered, her tone stern and low, "you have what you want!

Go!"

"No!" And he tried to pass her.

"Go!" she repeated in the same tone. "You have what you need." And

still she held her hand extended; still without faltering she faced the

five men, while the thunder, growing more distant, rolled sullenly

eastward, and the midnight rain, pouring from every spout and dripping

eave about the house, wrapped the passage in its sibilant hush. Gradually

her eyes dominated his, gradually her nobler nature and nobler aim

subdued his weaker parts. For she understood now; and he saw that she

did, and had he been alone he would have slunk away, and said no word in

his defence.

But one of the men, savage and out of patience, thrust himself between

them.

"Where is he?" he muttered. "What is the use of this? Where is he?" And

his bloodshot eyes--it was Tuez-les-Moines--questioned the doors, while

his hand, trembling and shaking on the haft of his knife, bespoke his

eagerness. "Where is he? Where is he, woman? Quick, or--"

"I shall not tell you," she answered.

"You lie," he cried, grinning like a dog. "You will tell us! Or we will

kill you too! Where is he? Where is he?"