“Isn’t it a pity,” sneered Mikel Grallon, “to see a pretty girl wasting herself on a coward, when——­”

He did not complete the sentence, for Rohan stretched out his hand and smote him down.  Grallon fell like a log.

A wild cry arose from all the men, the women screamed, even Marcelle shrank back; and Rohan strode to the door, pushing his way out.

“Hold him!  Kill him!” shouted some.

“Arrest him!” cried Corporal Derval.

Rohan hurled his opponents right and left like so many ninepins.  They fell back and gasped.  Then, turning his white face for an instant on Marcelle, her lover passed unmolested out into the darkness.

II.—­In the Cathedral of the Sea

Along the wild, rugged shore, a little way from Kromlaix, was an immense cavern of crimson granite, hung with gleaming moss, and washed by the roaring tides of the sea.  Its towering walls had been carved by wind and water into thousands of beautiful, fantastical forms, and a dim religious light fell from above through a long, funnel-shaped hole running from the roof of the cavern to the top of the great cliff.

It was here that Rohan Gwenfern hid from the band of soldiers sent in pursuit of him.  The air was damp and chill, but he breathed it with the comfort of a hardy animal.  He made a bed of dry seaweed on the top of the precipice leading to the hole in the cliff, where his mother came and lowered food to him every evening; and Jannedik, a pet goat that used to follow him everywhere in the days when he was a free man, was his only companion.  Strange and solitary was the life he led, but he slept as soundly in his bed of seaweed on the wild precipice as he did in his bed at home.

But one morning, when he awoke, a confused murmur broke upon his ear.  Peering over the ledge, he saw a crowd of soldiers standing on the shingle at the mouth of the cavern.

“Come down and surrender, in the name of the emperor!” cried the sergeant.

“Surrender!” shouted all his men.  And the vast, dim place rang with the echoing sound of their voices.

“You can have my dead body if you care to come up here for it!” cried Rohan, stepping into the light that fell from the hole in the cliff.

The soldiers stared up in astonishment when Rohan appeared on the ledge of the precipice.  He was now a gaunt, forlorn, hunted man, with a few rags hanging about his body, and a great shock of yellow hair tumbling below his shoulders.  Under the stress of mental suffering his flesh had wasted from his bones, but his eyes flashed with a terrible light.

“Come down,” said the sergeant, raising his gun, “or I will pick you off your perch as if you were a crow.”

Instead of getting behind a rock, Rohan stood up with a strange smile on his face, and said, “If you want me, you must come and fetch me.”

There was a flash, a roar—­the sergeant had fired.  But when the smoke had cleared away, Rohan was still standing on the ledge with the strange smile on his face.  The shot had gone wide.