Part 7

“The saints be praised!” cried Caterina, and she fell on her knees and burst into tears. “’Tis the carabineers of Ronciglione!”

Cyrille went to a side door which the fire had not reached, unfastened its bolts and bars, and went out on to the grass.

The gendarmes had slid from their saddles, had surrounded and seized the woodlanders, who made a fierce but short resistance. Against a horse from which she had dismounted there leaned a woman--pale, dishevelled, exhausted, staring with dilated eyes at the burning pile. She was drenched with sweat; discoloured with heat and dust; her mouth was wide open with parching thirst; her bare feet were bleeding.

It was Muriella.

Great tears were falling down her cheeks, for she had delivered her own kinsmen over to justice, and she was ashamed of the guilt of her father’s people.

“You brought the guards?” cried Cyrille, as he recognised her.

“I overheard--this afternoon--late,” she said, her breath deep drawn and laboured, like a worn-out steer’s; “it would have done no good to come here, and I knew the men at the picquet were absent. I ran to Ronciglione in four hours for the soldiery. There was no other way. I could trust no one.”

Alcide was standing, pinioned by a gendarme, his gun having been taken from him; his eyes were red with a wicked, furious flame. There was little light, except such as was shed by the glare of the burning wood; but that was enough to enable him to see who it was who had been his undoing.

With a sudden movement, lithe and quick and unexpected as a snake’s, he twisted himself from the hold of the carabineer who was about to manacle him, and with one leap like a deer’s he sprang to the side of his niece.

“Traitress!” he hissed in her ear, as he snatched a knife hidden in his waistbelt, and stabbed her full in the breast.

They seized him instantly again, but he had aimed too well not to have slain.

“It does not matter,” she said, as she pressed the haft of the knife to her bosom. “I was in time--it was that which mattered.”

The blood from her pierced lungs choked her.

“You will go home,” she murmured feebly. “The saints did hear!”

A moment later she was dead.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.