All this time he had held his hand in his bosom, and now he drew it out so far as to show the brass gleam of a pistol butt.

‘It is no use,’ said he, in answer to some look in the other’s eye.  ‘You stay in the hut, alive or dead.’

Lesage put his hands to his face and began to cry with loud, helpless sobbings.

‘Why, you have been worse than any of us, Charles,’ he moaned.  ’It was you who told Toussac to kill the man from Bow Street, and it was you also who set fire to the house in the Rue Basse de la Rampart.  And now you turn on us!’

’I did that because I wished to be the one to throw light upon it all—­and at the proper moment.’

’That is very fine, Charles, but what will be thought about that when I make it all public in my own defence?  How can you explain all that to your Emperor?  There is still time to prevent my telling all that I know about you.’

‘Well, really, I think that you are right, my friend,’ said the other, drawing out his pistol and cocking it.  ’Perhaps I did go a little beyond my instructions in one or two points, and, as you very properly remark, there is still time to set it right.  It is a matter of detail whether I give you up living or give you up dead, and I think that, on the whole, it had better be dead.’

It had been horrible to see Toussac tear the throat out of the hound, but it had not made my flesh creep as it crept now.  Pity was mingled with my disgust for this unfortunate young man, who had been fitted by Nature for the life of a retired student or of a dreaming poet, but who had been dragged by stronger wills than his own into a part which no child could be more incapable of playing.  I forgave him the trick by which he had caught me and the selfish fears to which he had been willing to sacrifice me.  He had flung himself down upon the ground, and floundered about in a convulsion of terror, whilst his terrible little companion, with his cynical smile, stood over him with his pistol in his hand.  He played with the helpless panting coward as a cat might with a mouse; but I read in his inexorable eyes that it was no jest, and his finger seemed to be already tightening upon his trigger.  Full of horror at so cold-blooded a murder, I pushed open my crazy cupboard, and had rushed out to plead for the victim, when there came a buzz of voices and a clanking of steel from without.  With a stentorian shout of ’In the name of the Emperor!’ a single violent wrench tore the door of the hut from its hinges.

It was still blowing hard, and through the open doorway I could see a thick cluster of mounted men, with plumes slanted and mantles flapping, the rain shining upon their shoulders.  At the side the light from the hut struck upon the heads of two beautiful horses, and upon the heavy red-toupeed busbies of the hussars who stood at their heads.  In the doorway stood another hussar—­a man of high rank, as could