“Come,” sneered the Professor, “undress that big gentleman while I make ready his little bed.”

So the soldiers stripped Martin, nor did they assault him with sneers and insults, for they remembered the man’s deeds of yesterday, and admired his strength and endurance, and the huge, muscular frame beneath their hands.

“Now he is ready if you are,” said the sergeant.

The Professor rubbed his hands.

“Come on, my little man,” he said.

Then Martin’s nerve gave way, and he began to shiver and to shake.

“Oho!” laughed the Professor, “even in this stuffy place he is cold without his clothes; well we must warm him—­we must warm him.”

“Who would have thought that a big fellow, who can fight well, too, was such a coward at heart,” said the sergeant of the guard to his companions.  “After all, he will give no more play than a Rhine salmon.”

Martin heard the words, and was seized with such an intense access of fear that he burst into a sweat all over his body.

“I can’t bear it,” he said, covering his eyes—­which, however, he did not shut—­with his fingers.  “The rack was always my nightmare, and now I see why.  I’ll tell all I know.”

“Oh!  Martin, Martin,” broke out Foy in a kind of wail, “I was doing my best to keep my own courage; I never dreamt that you would turn coward.”

“Every well has a bottom, master,” whined Martin, “and mine is the rack.  Forgive me, but I can’t abide the sight of it.”

Foy stared at him open-mouthed.  Could he believe his ears?  And if Martin was so horribly scared, why did his eye glint in that peculiar way between his fingers?  He had seen this light in it before, no later indeed than the last afternoon just as the soldiers tried to rush the stair.  He gave up the problem as insoluble, but from that moment he watched very narrowly.

“Do you hear what this young lady says, Professor Baptiste?” said the sergeant.  “She says” (imitating Martin’s whine) “that she’ll tell all she knows.”

“Then the great cur might have saved me this trouble.  Stop here with him.  I must go and inform the Governor; those are my orders.  No, no, you needn’t give him clothes yet—­that cloth is enough—­one can never be sure.”

Then he walked to the door and began to unlock it, as he went striking Martin in the face with the back of his hand, and saying,

“Take that, cur.”  Whereat, as Foy observed, the cowed prisoner perspired more profusely than before, and shrank away towards the wall.

God in Heaven!  What had happened?  The door of the torture den was opened, and suddenly, uttering the words, “To me, Foy!” Martin made a movement more quick than he could follow.  Something flew up and fell with a fearful thud upon the executioner in the doorway.  The guard sprang forward, and a great bar of iron, hurled with awful force into their faces, swept two of them broken to the ground.  Another instant, and one arm was about his middle, the next they were outside the door, Martin standing straddle-legged over the body of the dead Professor Baptiste.