After this brief hostile outbreak in the garden below the right wing, Mauville prepared to make as effective defense as lay in his power and looked around for his aid, the driver of the coach. But that quaking individual had taken advantage of the excitement to disappear. Upon hearing the threats, followed by the singing of bullets, and doubting not the same treatment accorded the master would be meted out to the servant, the coachman’s fealty so oozed from him that he dropped his blunderbuss, groping his way through the long halls to the cellar, where he concealed himself in an out-of-the-way corner beneath a heap of potato sacks. In that vast subterranean place he congratulated himself he would escape with a whole skin, his only regret being certain unpaid wages which he considered as good as lost, together with the master who owed them.

Mauville, however, would have little regretted the disappearance of this poor-spirited aid, on the theory a craven follower is worse than none at all, had not this 173 discovery been followed quickly by the realization that the young girl, too, had availed herself of the opportunity while he was at the window and vanished.

“Why, the slippery jade’s gone!” he exclaimed, staring around the room, confounded for the moment. Then recovering himself, he hurriedly left the chamber, more apprehensive lest she should get out of the manor than that the tenants should get in.

“She can’t be far off,” he thought, pausing doubtfully in the hall.

For the moment he almost forgot the anti-renters and determined to find her at all hazard. He hastily traversed the upper hall, but was rewarded with no sight of her. He gazed down the stairs eagerly, with no better result; the front door was still closed, as he had left it. Evidently she had fled toward the rear of the house and made good her escape from one of the back or side entrances.

“Yes; she’s gone,” he repeated. “What a fool I was to have trusted her to herself for a moment!”

A new misgiving arose, and he started. What if she had succeeded in leaving the manor? He knew and distrusted Little Thunder and his cohorts. What respect would they have for her? For all he had done, it was, nevertheless, intolerable to think she might be in possible danger––from others save himself! A wave of compunction swept over him. After all, he loved her, and, loving her, could not bear to think of any calamity befalling her. He hated her for tricking him; 174 feared for her, for the pass to which he had brought her; cared for her beyond the point his liking had reached for any other woman. A mirthless laugh escaped him as he stood at the stairway looking down the empty hall.

“Surely I’ve gone daft over the stroller!” he thought, as his own position recurred to him in all its seriousness. “Well, what’s done is done! Let them come!” His eyes gleamed.

With no definite purpose of searching further, he nevertheless walked mechanically down the corridor toward the other side of the manor and suddenly, to his surprise and satisfaction, discerned Constance in a blind passage, where she had inadvertently fled.

At the end of this narrow hall a window looked almost directly out upon the circular, brick dove-cote, now an indistinct outline, and on both sides were doors, one of which she was vainly endeavoring to open when he approached. Immediately she desisted in her efforts; flushed and panting, she stood in the dim light of the passage. Quiet, unbroken save for the cooing in the cote, had succeeded the first noisy demonstration; the anti-renters were evidently arranging their forces to prevent the land baron’s escape or planning an assault on the manor.

In his momentary satisfaction at finding her, Mauville overlooked the near prospect of a more lengthy, if not final, separation, and surveyed the young girl with a sudden, swift joyousness, but the fear and distrust 175 written on her features dissipated his concern for her; his best impulses were smothered by harsher feelings.

“Unfortunately, the door is locked,” he said, ironically. “Meanwhile, as this spot has no strategic advantages, suppose we change our base of defense?”

Realizing how futile would be resistance, she accompanied him once more to the chamber in the wing, where he had determined to make his last defense. After closing and locking the door, he lighted one of many candles on the mantel. The uncertain glow from the great candelabra, covered with dust, like the white marble itself, and evidently placed there many years before, revealed faded decorations and a ceiling, water-stained as from a defective roof. Between the windows, with flowery gilt details, an ancient mirror extended from floor to ceiling. A musty smell pervaded the apartment, for Mynheer, the Patroon, had lived so closely to himself that he had shut out both air and sunlight from his rooms.

The flickering glare fell upon the young actress standing, hand upon her heart, listening with bated breath, and Mauville, with ominous expression, brooding over that chance which sent the lease-holders to the manor on that night of nights. It was intolerable that no sooner had she crossed his threshold than they should appear, ripe for any mischief, not only seeking his life, but wresting happiness from his very lips. For, of the outcome he could have little doubt, 176 although determined to sell dearly that which they sought.

The violent crash of a heavy body at the front of the house and a tumult of voices on the porch, succeeded by a din in the hall, announced that the first barrier had been overcome and the anti-renters were in possession of the lower floor of the manor. Mauville had started toward the door, when the anticipation in the young girl’s eyes held him to the spot. Inaccessible, she was the more desired; her reserve was fuel to his flame, and, at that moment, while his life hung in the balance, he forgot the rebuff he had received and how she had nearly played upon him.

Words fell from his lips, unpremeditated, eloquent, voicing those desires which had grown in the solitude of the manor. Passionately he addressed her, knowing the climax to his difficulties was at hand. Once near her, he could not be at peace without her, he vowed, and this outcome had been inevitable. All this he uttered impetuously, at times incoherently, but as he concluded, she only clasped her hands helplessly, solely conscious of the uproar below which spread from the main hall to the adjoining rooms.

“They are coming––they are coming!” she said, and Mauville stopped short.

But while anger and resentment were at strife within him, some one tried the door of the chamber and finding it locked, set up a shout. Immediately the prowlers in the wings, the searchers in the kitchen and all the stragglers below congregated in the main 177 hall; footsteps were heard ascending rapidly, pausing in doubt at the head of the stairway, not knowing whether to turn to the right or to the left.

“Here they are!” called out the man at the door.

“You meddlesome fool!” exclaimed Mauville, lifting a revolver and discharging it in the direction of the voice. Evidently the bullet, passing through the panel of the door, found its mark, for the report was followed by a cry of pain.

This plaint was answered from the distance and soon a number of anti-renters hastened to the spot. Mauville, in vicious humor, moved toward the threshold. One of the panels was already broken and an arm thrust into the opening. The land baron bent forward and coolly clapped his weapon to the member, the loud discharge being succeeded by a howl from the wounded lease-holder. Mauville again raised his weapon when an exclamation from the actress caused him to turn quickly, in time to see a figure spring unexpectedly into the room from the balcony. The land baron stood in amazement, eying the intruder who had appeared so suddenly from an unguarded quarter, but before he could recover his self-possession, his hand was struck heavily and the revolver fell with a clatter to the floor.

His assailant quickly grasped the weapon, presenting it to the breast of the surprised land-owner, who looked, not into the face of an unknown anti-renter, but into the stern, familiar countenance of Saint-Prosper.