“These be Blanchet the sorcerer and Robin Romulart.  But last week they took notice of my little Jean and praised him for a noble boy.”

Sholto turned round, and there at his elbow, having followed them in spite of all orders and precautions, he discerned the woodman Louis Verger, whose little son had been carried off by the grey she-wolf.

Sholto motioned him back, and at a sign from the Duke, his father and he began to descend.  So silently did they make their way down the stone steps, and so intent were the men upon their work, that in a minute after leaving the little gallery Malise stood behind the taller and Sholto stole like a shadow along the wall nearer to the little rotund man who had been called Robin Romulart.

The Duke held up his hand.  Sholto and Malise each took their man about the throat with their left arms and pulled them backward, at the same time covering their mouths with their right hands.  Blanchet never moved in the strong arms of Malise.  But Robin, whose rotund figure concealed his great muscular development, might have escaped from Sholto had not the woodman Verger flung himself at the little man’s throat and brought him to the ground.  Then the Duke and the others descended, and as they did so they became conscious of a choking mephitic vapour which clung dank and heavy to the lower courses of the tower.

Suddenly a wild cry made all shiver.  It came from Louis Verger, who had sprung upon something that lay tossed aside in a corner.

“Silence, man—­on your life!  Silence!” hissed Pierre de l’Hopital.  “Whatever you have found, think only of revenge and help us to it!”

“I have found him.  He is dead!  The fiends!  The fiends!” sobbed Louis Verger, covering a small partially charred object with the curtmantle of which he had rapidly divested himself for the purpose.

Then it came upon those who stood on the floor of the tower that they were in the marshal’s main charnel-house.  These vague forms, mostly charred like half-burned wood, these scraps of white bone, these little crushed skulls, were all that remained of the innocent children who, in the freshness of their youth and beauty, had been seduced into the fatal Castle of Machecoul.

And what wonder that an appalling terror sat on the heart and mastered the soul of Sholto MacKim.  For how did he know that he was not treading under foot at each step the calcined fragments of the fair body of Maud Lindesay?

Twenty sacks had been filled ready for transport, and as many more lay folded and empty in a heap in a corner.  The marshal, uneasy perhaps as to the suspicions against him, and anxious to remove evidence from the precincts of his castle, had ordered this Tower of Death to be cleared.  But truly his devil had once more forsaken him.  The order had been given a day too late.

“God’s grace, I stifle.  Let us get out of this, and seize the murderer,” quoth Duke John, making his way towards the door.