They found themselves a pace or so from the head of a narrow staircase, leading downwards.  Without moving, they could see the door which closed it below.  Tignonville signed to La Tribe to wait, and himself crept down the stairs.  He reached the door, and, stooping, set his eye to the hole through which the string of the latch passed.  A moment he looked, and then, turning on tiptoe, he stole up again, his face fallen.

“You may throw the handle after the hatchet!” he muttered.  “The man on guard is within four yards of the door.”  And in the rage of disappointment he struck the air with his hand.

“Is he looking this way?”

“No.  He is looking down the passage towards our room.  But it is impossible to pass him.”

La Tribe nodded, and moved softly to one of the lattices which lighted the room.  It might be possible to escape that way, by the parapet and the tiles.  But he found that the casement was set high in the roof, which sloped steeply from its sill to the eaves.  He passed to the other window, in which a little wicket in the lattice stood open.  He looked through it.  In the giddy void white pigeons were wheeling in the dazzling sunshine, and, gazing down, he saw far below him, in the hot square, a row of booths, and troops of people moving to and fro like pigmies; and—­and a strange thing, in the middle of all!  Involuntarily, as if the persons below could have seen his face at the tiny dormer, he drew back.

He beckoned to M. Tignonville to come to him; and when the young man complied, he bade him in a whisper look down.  “See!” he muttered.  “There!”

The younger man saw and drew in his breath.  Even under the coating of dust his face turned a shade greyer.

“You had no need to fear that he would let us go!” the minister muttered, with half-conscious irony.

“No.”

“Nor I!  There are two ropes.”  And La Tribe breathed a few words of prayer.  The object which had fixed his gaze was a gibbet:  the only one of the three which could be seen from their eyrie.

Tignonville, on the other hand, turned sharply away, and with haggard eyes stared about the room.  “We might defend the staircase,” he muttered.  “Two men might hold it for a time.”

“We have no food.”

“No.”  Suddenly he gripped La Tribe’s arm.  “I have it!” he cried.  “And it may do!  It must do!” he continued, his face working.  “See!” And lifting from the floor one of the ragged pallets, from which the straw protruded in a dozen places, he set it flat on his head.

It drooped at each corner—­it had seen much wear—­and, while it almost hid his face, it revealed his grimy chin and mortar-stained shoulders.  He turned to his companion.

La Tribe’s face glowed as he looked.  “It may do!” he cried.  “It’s a chance!  But you are right!  It may do!”

Tignonville dropped the ragged mattress, and tore off his coat; then he rent his breeches at the knee, so that they hung loose about his calves.