Safety seemed to lie in silence, for I knew that other, whatever it was, was listening as I was.

I held my breath, but my heart was thumping so that it seemed impossible that it should not be heard.  From the place where Carette lay I could not hear a sound, not even the sound of her breathing.

I think I must have burst soon if that state of matters had continued.  Every drop of blood in my body seemed throbbing in my head just back of my ears, and all the rest of me was cold and tense with the strain.  It was like waiting on a fearsome black day of thunder for the storm to break.

Then I heard a movement close to me where I lay on the ground, and, like the lightning out of the thundercloud, there came the click of steel on flint and I breathed soundlessly.  It was, at all events, human.

And then my breath caught again.  For the tiny lightning flash that came out of the flint lit, with one brief gleam, the face of the man to whom my death was as necessary as the breath of life,—­whose presence there held most dreadful menace for us both,—­Torode of Herm.

For one moment life stood still with me.  For here, in this close darkness, were we three within arm’s length of one another;—­the man I had reason to fear and hate above any other on earth, and the price of whose life was my own, a price I would not pay; the woman whose life was dearer to me than my own, for whom I would gladly pay any price, even the utmost; and myself, by force of circumstances, the unwilling link that had brought them both there, and the menace to both their lives, for Torode came for me and Carette came with me.

The wheels of life began to turn for me again, and my hand felt stealthily along the ledge at my side, where George Hamon’s pistol had lain ever since he gave it to me.

Thoughts surged in my brain like the long western waves in the Boutiques, all in a wild confusion.  This man had spared my life.  He had come to take it.  Carette was at stake.

I knew what I had to do—­if I could do it.

He struck again with the steel, and as he bent to blow the tinder into flame his eye caught the gleam of it on Aunt Jeanne’s polished milk-can.  I know not what he thought it.  Possibly his nerves were overstrung with what he had been going through.  With an oath he dropped the tinder, and snatched out a pistol, and fired in the direction of the can.  And as the blaze lit up the great black bulk of him I stood up quickly and fired also,—­and, before God, I think I was justified, for it was his life or ours.

The place bellowed with the shots, and the air was thick with smoke and the sharp smell of powder.  No sound came from the floor, and I stood holding the pistol by the muzzle to strike him down again if he should rise.  But he did not move, and my fears were not for him.

“Carette!” I cried.  “Carette!”

And my love rose suddenly with a cry and fell sobbing into my arms.