Toward the end of the afternoon he saw in the distance the spire of the church of La Thierry. He felt positive by this time that Gardin must have taken the upper road or he should have overtaken him before this, so rapidly had he traveled. Every step of the way was familiar to him. Every bend in the river, every stone by the wayside was associated with his boyhood. Just before he came to the village of La Thierry, he left the main road and turning to the right followed a lane that made a short cut to the château de Rochefort. It was about two miles long and in summer was an archway of shaded trees and full of refreshment. Now the branches were bare, and the flying feet of his steed sank to the fetlocks in the carpet of damp, dead leaves. As he approached the château on the right he heard a sound that caused him to draw rein in consternation. Springing from his horse he fastened him to a sapling by the wayside, seized his pistols from his holsters, and hurried forward on foot. At every step he took the sounds grew louder. There was no mistaking their meaning. The lane terminated about a hundred yards from the house. Tournay threw himself flat upon the earth and working his way to a place where he was sheltered by the overhanging branches of some hemlock trees, looked cautiously out toward the château. An attack was being made on the château at the front. Half a score of men armed with clubs and various other weapons were endeavoring to break down the iron-studded oaken door. A gigantic figure with shirt open to the waist, whom Tournay recognized as the blacksmith of La Thierry, was dealing blow after blow in rapid succession with a huge sledge-hammer. The door, which had been built to resist a siege during the religious wars of the sixteenth century, groaned and trembled under the blows of the mighty Vulcan, but still held fast to the hinges. A man, standing a little apart from the others and directing their movements, Tournay knew to be Gardin. Seeing that they were making little headway, the latter ordered his men to desist, evidently to form a more definite plan of attack. In the mean time Tournay was working along the line of the hemlocks towards the rear of the house. Suddenly three or four men detached themselves from the attacking party and approached him. Fearing that he had been discovered, he lay perfectly quiet. He soon saw that they were making for the trunk of a sturdy ash-tree which had been recently felled by a stroke of lightning. This they soon stripped of its branches, and hewing off about thirty feet of the trunk they bore it back on their shoulders with shouts of triumph. Here was a battering-ram which would clear a way for them.