“Murderer!  Fiend!  I will kill you!” he cried, and with his dagger bare in his hand he would have thrown himself upon the marshal.  But swifter than the rush of the young man in his strength there came another from the door of the inner chamber.

With a deep-throated roar of wholly bestial fury, Astarte the she-wolf sprang upon Laurence, and, though he sank his dagger twice to the hilt in her hairy chest, she over-bore him and they fell to the ground with her teeth gripping his shoulder.  Laurence felt the hot life-blood of the beast spurt forth and mingle with his own.  Then a flood of swirling waters seemed to bear him suddenly away into the unknown.

* * * * *

When Laurence MacKim came to himself he emerged into a chill world in which he felt somehow infinitely lonely and forsaken.  Next he grew slowly conscious that his feet and arms were bound tightly with cords that cut painfully into the flesh.  Then he realised that he, too, had taken his place beside the maids upon the altar of iron.  Strangely enough he did not feel afraid nor even wish himself elsewhere.  He only wondered what would happen next.

He opened his eyes and lo! they looked directly into the leering countenance of the monstrous image.  Yet there seemed something curiously encouraging and even beneficent about the aspect of the demon.  But so often as Gilles de Retz passed the triple array of his victims with his back to the image, the regard of the sculptured devil followed him, grim and mocking.

Words of angry altercation came to the ears of Laurence MacKim.

“I tell you,” cried the voice of Gilles de Retz, “I will not spare them.  Well nigh had I succeeded.  Almost I was young again.  I was tasting the first sweetness of knowledge wide as that of the gods.  I felt the new life stirring within me.  But I had not enough of the blood of innocence, which is the only worthy libation to Barran-Sathanas, who alone can bestow youth and life.”

Then the Lady Sybilla answered him.  “I pray you, Gilles de Retz, as you hope for mercy, slay not these maidens and this youth.  Take me, and bind me, instead, for the sacrifice of death.  I have wrought enough of evil!  Take of my blood and work out your purpose.  Let me give you the libation you desire.  Gilles de Retz, if ever I have aided you, grant me this boon now.  I beseech you, let these innocents go, and bind me upon the altar in their places.”

Long and loud laughed Gilles de Retz, a hard, evil, and relentless laugh.

“Sybilla de Thouars an innocent maiden’s sacrifice!  Barran-Sathanas himself laughs at the jest.  He would have no pleasure in your death.  Soul and body you are his already.  He desires only the blood and suffering of the innocent—­of those on whom he has never set his mark.  Nay, these three shall surely die, and in that bath of porphyry hollowed out under his altar I will lave me from head to foot in the Red Milk of innocence.  I have no more need of you, Sybilla mine.  You have done your work, and for your reward you can now depart to your own place.  Out of my way, I say.  Henriet, Poitou, quick!  Remove this woman from before the altar!”