The Governor of the city, the Duke Charles de Rochelle, seated on his charger, a magnificent coal black Flemish animal, drew up in the centre of the cleared space, and gazed with amused contemptuousness upon the shrinking burghers. He made a striking centre-piece. Short and slight of figure, yet suggesting suppleness and strength, his fifty years sat lightly on him. His fair hair had scarce a touch of grey, and his pointed auburn beard and flowing moustache might have belonged to a man twenty years his junior. His features, strong and regular, would have been handsome but for the small close-set grey eyes, whose cold, hawk-like glitter was rendered additionally repulsive by a strong cast. “The eyes of a wild beast,” thought Gerard, who had been watching him intently. “Well named the Tiger.” At a signal from the Governor, the herald stepped forward amid a blare of trumpets and read the proclamation. The people listened in dead silence; but at the close, loud murmurs broke out which even the presence of the soldiery could not wholly check. “It means starvation to us,” cried one lusty voice, and a powerful fellow, a smith, wielding the heavy hammer of his trade, broke through the ring of the soldiers and made as if to approach the Governor. “What dog is this that dares to bay?” It was the Duke who spoke. “I am no dog, my lord, but a burgher of Morvaix, and I do but speak what all here know,” answered the smith sturdily. The Duke fixed his keen eyes on the man’s face, and without a word signed to some of those about him. Three soldiers sprang toward the smith, who faced them fearlessly, and lifted his hammer. “I have done no wrong. No man shall touch me,” he said threateningly. “Down with the rebel dog,” cried the Duke; and at the words the soldiers, who had hesitated, rushed upon the smith. Two went down with broken heads from blows of the terrible hammer; but the third got his halberd in, and as the man lay on the ground some others dashed forward and one of them thrust home to his heart. “So perish all rebels,” cried the Governor, in a ringing tone to the crowd; and at the threat and the sight of the smith’s blood the people shrank together and cowered. The Duke smiled coldly on the crowd, and without another word signed for the procession to reform and march on, the people shrinking and cowering in silence from the troops as they passed. Gerard’s hot blood had fired at the scene, and he stood looking after the Governor with a heart hot with indignant anger at the foul injustice he had witnessed. His two followers in monkish garb crossed to him and as the three whispered together, they were startled by the sound of a woman’s wailing. It was the dead man’s wife. She had heard the news and came rushing upon the scene in wild disordered distress, carrying her babe in her arms.