As we went downstairs the heat was excessive, and the roaring of the fire filled our ears; and we had scarce reached the passage before the stairs window fell in, a branch of flame shot brandishing through the aperture, and the interior of the pavilion became lighted up with that dreadful and fluctuating glare.  At the same moment we heard the fall of something heavy and inelastic in the upper story.  The whole pavilion, it was plain, had gone alight like a box of matches, and now not only flamed sky high to land and sea, but threatened with every moment to crumble and fall in about our ears.

Northmour and I cocked our revolvers.  Mr. Huddlestone, who had already refused a firearm, put us behind him with a manner of command.

“Let Clara open the door,” said he.  “So, if they fire a volley, she will be protected.  And in the meantime stand behind me.  I am the scapegoat; my sins have found me out.”

I heard him, as I stood breathless by his shoulder, with my pistol ready, pattering off prayers in a tremulous, rapid whisper; and, I confess, horrid as the thought may seem, I despised him for thinking of supplications in a moment so critical and thrilling.  In the meantime, Clara, who was dead white but still possessed her faculties, had displaced the barricade from the front door.  Another moment, and she had pulled it open.  Firelight and moonlight illuminated the links with confused and changeful luster, and far away against the sky we could see a long trail of glowing smoke.

Mr. Huddlestone, filled for the moment with a strength greater than his own, struck Northmour and myself a back-hander in the chest; and while we were thus for the moment incapacitated from action, lifting his arms above his head like one about to dive, he ran straight forward out of the pavilion.

“Here am I!” he cried—­“Huddlestone!  Kill me, and spare the others!”

His sudden appearance daunted, I suppose, our hidden enemies; for Northmour and I had time to recover, to seize Clara between us, one by each arm, and to rush forth to his assistance, ere anything further had taken place.  But scarce had we passed the threshold when there came near a dozen reports and flashes from every direction among the hollows of the links.  Mr. Huddlestone staggered, uttered a weird and freezing cry, threw up his arms over his head, and fell backward on the turf.

"Traditore!  Traditore!" cried the invisible avengers.

And just then a part of the roof of the pavilion fell in, so rapid was the progress of the fire.  A loud, vague, and horrible noise accompanied the collapse, and a vast volume of flame went soaring up to heaven.  It must have been visible at that moment from twenty miles out at sea, from the shore at Graden Wester, and far inland from the peak of Graystiel, the most eastern summit of the Caulder Hills.  Bernard Huddlestone, although God knows what were his obsequies, had a fine pyre at the moment of his death.