There were noises that he could not interpret—­vague tramplings from a direction which he could not tell; voices that shouted; the sound of metal on stone.

He did interpret rightly, however, the sudden tumult as the gate was unbarred at last, and the shrill screaming of a woman as the company poured through into the house; the clamour of voices from beneath as the hall below was filled with men; the battering that began almost immediately; and, finally, the rush of shod feet up the outside staircases, one of which led straight into the chapel itself.  Then, indeed, his heart seemed to spring upwards into his throat, and to beat there, as loud as knocking, so loud that it appeared to him that all the house must hear it.

* * * * *

Yet it was still some minutes before the climax came to him.  He was still standing there, listening to voices talking, it seemed, almost in his ears, yet whose words he could not hear; the vibration of feet that shook the solid joist against which he had leaned his head, with closed eyes; the brush of a cloak once, like a whisper, against the very panel that shut him in.  He could attend to nothing else; the rest of the drama was as nothing to him:  he had his business in hand—­to keep away from himself, by the very intentness of his will and determination, the feet that passed so close.

The climax came in a sudden thump of a pike foot within a yard of his head, so imminent, that for an instant he thought it was at his own panel.  There followed a splintering sound of a pike-head in the same place.  He understood.  They were sounding on the woodwork and piercing all that rang hollow....  His turn, then, would come immediately.

Talking voices followed the crash; then silence; then the vibration of feet once more.  The strain grew unbearable; his fingers twisted tight in his rosary, lifted themselves once or twice from the floor edge on which they were gripped, to tear back the bolts and declare himself.  It seemed to him in those instants a thousand times better to come out of his own will, rather than to be poked and dragged from his hole like a badger.  In the very midst of such imaginings there came a thumping blow within three inches of his face, and then silence.  He leaned back desperately to avoid the pike-thrust that must follow, with his eyes screwed tight and his lips mumbling.  He waited;... and then, as he waited, he drew an irrepressible hissing breath of terror, for beneath the soft padding under his feet he could feel movements; blow follow blow, from the same direction, and last a great clamour of voices all shouting together.

Feet ran across the floor on which his hands were gripped again, and down the stairs.  He perceived two things:  the chapel was empty again, and the priests below had been found.

V

He could follow every step of the drama after that, for he appeared to himself now as a mere witness, without personal part in it.