“Not yet,” said Cyrille. “These wretched people were confided to my care. If I have missed the way to their souls it is my fault.” Caterina gave a snort of scorn. “They will not miss the way to your vitals, be sure! Much good will your fine thoughts do you when the scoundrels shall haul you out through the smoke, and hack you to pieces as they would hack a wild boar’s limbs off his trunk.” Despite his courage and composure a shudder ran through him at the horrible words. But he did not open the panel and fire. The men without were mad with rage because they had not found the house opened to them as arranged with the absent household. They had planned an easy entrance, unmolested pillage, and the slaughter of the foreigner in his bed. They could not tell why they found him up and armed; and all the entrances of the house closed. “’Tis that traitress Muriella,” muttered Lucio; “she warned him, be sure,” and as he spoke the other men screamed in chorus with rage and hate. Let them find her! let them only find her! She should rue the day that her mother, the cursed woman of Viterbo, bore her! They heaped the dry heather and pine branches up in a great pile before the doorway; they lighted matches and resinous cones, and tried to set fire to the pile. They had not brought petroleum, because of its name and use they were all ignorant. The wood failed to catch alight; the air was heavy, and there was no wind to stir a flame. Cyrille debated whether it would not be best for the place and for the woman to give himself up to the will of the assailants, on condition that she and it should be spared. But he knew that he could not trust them to fulfil any conditions, and the soldier and the noble in him loathed the thought of surrender to this rabble, and at last he fired through one of the inch-wide squares of the grating. His shot broke the wrist of the man lighting the heather. They all for a moment fell back demoralised; Alcide was safe out of reach, for he had expected shots from within, and had given his comrades the posts of danger. “I would willingly spare you,” said Cyrille, and his voice came clearly to them through the little aperture. “But you shall not fire the house whilst I live; I will break the bone of every man’s arm used to set light to this wood.” There was a brief pause. They were cunning, vindictive, merciless, but they were not brave, and they could not be certain that he was alone. They drew back from the doorway, and took counsel amongst themselves. No one of them cared to be the second to have his wrist snapped in two; the first man who had met this fate was howling like a wounded wolf, calling curses down on the head of Alcide. It was one thing to enter a defenceless and open house, and pillage all it contained, and kill a stranger in his sleep, and another to force entrance under the deadly fire of a revolver whose owner was masked and protected by iron-plated doors.