The sword broke a foot from the guard, but John Gore held to the hilt, even while the brute bulk of the man was grinding over him down the steps. Twisting free, he slipped aside against the wall, only to feel a hand grasping at his throat, and the sound of hoarse, wet breathing mingling with savage curses. He struck out with the hilt of the sword, broke the man’s grip, and came up top dog despite Simon Pinniger’s brute, plunging fury. It was like the death-thrashing of a leviathan amid blood and spray. They struggled, clawed, and smote for a moment, till a chance stab went deep into the fellow’s eye. He crumpled down into the darkness; John Gore heard his head strike the wall, and the breath come out of him like the wind out of a stabbed “float.” The man was mere carrion, and John Gore sprang up the stairs, finding the lantern still burning, though the grease from the candle had guttered through upon the stones. He picked it up, and was about to push forward into the room when a black square in the flooring caught his eye. A flagstone had been turned upon its side against the wall, uncovering the mouth of some oubliette or pit, and for a moment he bent over it, trying to probe its depths, as though dreading lest that dear body should be lying broken in the darkness beneath. A glance through the open door of the room showed him Barbara lying upon the floor, with the bedclothes half covering her as she lay. He was down beside her with a cold sweat of fear on him as the light from the lantern fell upon her face. A red scarf had been wound about her neck, and her two hands were still straining at it, pathetic in their impotence to let in life and breath. John Gore set the lantern down, caught her up and unwound the thing, cursing as he did so the marks where the white throat had been bruised by brutal hands. There was froth on her lips and dusky shadow covering her face, yet the lips were warm when he pressed his cheek to them, and, putting an ear to her bosom, he found that her heart still throbbed. An inarticulate “Thank God!” came from him, but the cry of the moment was “Air! air!” Taking her in his arms, he bent for the lantern, and swinging it by the ring from one finger, he started down the stairs. He hardly heeded the two bodies lying there, save to step over them, and so, with all his manhood praying and striving for the life in her, he came out into the cold night air and the pale gleam of the moon.