Seeing them again occupied with the assault, Tournay continued to crawl cautiously along the edge of the grove until he was in a line with the rear buildings. Here were the servants' rooms, the business offices of the estate, and at one corner the office and the rooms occupied by Matthieu Tournay, the steward. This, the oldest part of the building, was covered thick with old ivy, by whose gnarled and twisted roots he had climbed often, when a boy, to the little chamber in the roof which had been his own. From this he knew well how to reach the apartments in the main building. The repeated blows of the ash-tree against the doors warned him that they could not resist the attack much longer. He climbed quickly up until he reached the well-known little window under the eaves. Dashing it open with his fist he swung himself into the attic-room which he had known so well in his boyhood. CHAPTER V A BROKEN DOOR "Open, in the name of the Republic." No answer. Crash! Crash! Blow followed blow upon the door of the old château. "Again, citizens, once again! Brasseur! bring fagots, we'll fire the old trap. Forgons, take this sledge-hammer in your big hands. At it, man!--we'll soon have the lair of the aristocrats down about their ears. Defour, Haillons, and you others, take up that ash-tree and let it strike in the same place as before." Amid a pandemonium of shouts and curses the blows continued to rain upon the iron-studded outer door of the château de Rochefort, and the tree, used as a battering-ram, poised upon the shoulders of a dozen men, was dashed forward with a force that made the hinge-bolts start from their sockets and the oaken panels fill the air with splinters. The besieged had taken refuge in one of the large salons on the second floor. There were only four of them: an old man, a priest, and two women. "They have nearly forced the outer door," cried old Matthieu Tournay, wiping the perspiration from his brow with trembling hand. "But the inner one," exclaimed the priest, laying his hand on Matthieu's arm. "How long will that keep them off?" "They'll break through that easily. Nothing can save us now; we are all lost," replied the old man. "May the Blessed Virgin preserve us from the monsters," murmured the priest, looking towards the woman. Edmé de Rochefort stood near the window. The terrifying sounds which echoed through the lower part of the building would have unnerved her, had not anger supplied a sustaining force, and brought a deep flush to supplant the pallor on her cheeks. The spirit of her race was roused within her. Had she been a man she would have charged alone, sword in hand, against the mob; but being only a woman she stood waiting the issue. Trembling slightly, she stood with her small hands clenched and white teeth firmly set. At her elbow was Agatha, her maid. She was paler than her mistress, but it was not for herself she feared. Her devotion made her fear more for Edmé's safety than for her own.