It was with a feeling of chill water running icily down his back that he passed each black cavern, glancing warily over his shoulder lest he should catch the downward stroke of an arm in the doorway, or see the candle-light flash on the deadly blade of the Killer's butchering knife. It was nerve-shaking work. The sweat, chill as the clammy mist of the night, began to pour down Wat's face, and his flesh grew prickly all over as though he had been stuck full of pins. Unless something happened, he felt that in another moment he must shriek aloud. He stopped and listened. Somewhere near him he felt sure he could distinguish the sound of breathing. It was not the heavy, regular to-and-fro respiration of unconscious sleep, but rather the quicker and shorter breathing of one who has recently undergone severe exertion, and whose heart still runs fast ahead. Wat stood and listened. The sound came from half-way up the stairs, out of a room with a door which opened wider than the others, and which now stood, gaping black and ominous, directly before him. Wat could hear the sound of feet behind him, cautiously shuffling on the flags of the doorway, and by this sign he knew that his three ruffians were there waiting for him with the weapons of their trade naked and deadly in their hands. He was trapped, taken between the brutal, dastard butchers behind him and the unknown but more terrible breathers in the dark above him. Yet his very desperation brought a compensating calmness. He pressed his arm against his side, where, in an inner pocket, he carried the papers he had come to deliver. He undid the button of his cloak, and let it fall to the ground to clear his sword-arm. Then, bending forward like a runner straining to obtain good pace at the start of a short race, he went up the stairs steadily and warily till he had reached the door of the room. His candle was almost blown out with the quickness of his motion. It flickered low, and then caught again, as Wat stepped nimbly within, and made the point of his sword circle about him to clear himself a space against attack. Then he looked around him. He found himself in a wide, low-ceilinged room, with many small windows along the side. A curtain of arras hung at one end, and a table stood in front of it--a hall of rustic assembly, as it seemed. At the far side of the table from him and between its edge and the curtain, calm as though it had been broad day, sat a tall, thin man. He had red hair and a short red beard, both liberally sprinkled with gray. His eyes were of a curious China blue, pale and cold. He was clad in a French uniform, and a pair of pistols and a drawn sword lay on the table before him. The man sat perfectly still, with his elbows on the table and his chin on the knuckles of the hands which were joined beneath his beard. His eyes were alive, however, and surveyed Wat Gordon from head to foot. The effect of this scrutiny upon the man in the chair was somewhat surprising.