The volleys that rang out that August evening over the Bay of Quiberon had left one man out of the doomed thirty untouched by any bullet--preserved as by a miracle. The miracle was wrought by greed, and the man--as may be guessed--was Fortuné de la Vireville. Fortuné had realised the incredible thing quickly enough. Dazed though he was by the ear-splitting general discharge at such close quarters, he had no sooner perceived that he was still on his feet, unharmed, than he had torn off the bandage round his eyes, taken one glance at the scene through the drifting smoke, and with a single bound had cleared the low stone wall behind him. Even as he jumped, however, came a report, and his left, his already injured, arm fell powerless to his side. He staggered a moment with the shock, recovered himself, plunged through the little thicket of dwarfed trees, and in another minute was running like a deer across the pale barley-field beyond. He was saved--for the time at least--by a chance the possibility of which had never entered his head. At the moment of the command to fire, his executioners had been stooping after the gold which he had just thrown to them. . . . One man only, he who had just winged him, was bringing his musket to the level as the émigré had snatched the handkerchief from his eyes and turned. Now, as he ran, the barley catching at his bare feet, the rest of the belated volley and some other shots came after him. But they went wide; the light, at that distance, was too uncertain. La Vireville tore on. Yet that one marksman had scored heavily enough, as was soon only too obvious to the fugitive. His left elbow was shattered, and--what for the moment was worse--the injury was bleeding very copiously. La Vireville supported it with his other hand and arm as he raced through the barley, but he knew that between the severity of the pain, which the rapid motion was momentarily intensifying to agony, and the haemorrhage, he would not be able to run much farther. And indeed there was not much farther for him to run, since beyond the field was nothing but the shore. That solved the question, anyhow. With forty others to despatch, too, there was just a chance that they would not pursue him immediately. So, where the edge of the barley-field curved gently over to the beach, he scrambled down, panting and dizzy, and fell to his knees on the soft sand. One thing he knew to be imperative--to stop the blood pouring from his arm, and in a kind of frenzy he tore off the bandage from his former, half-healed wound and tied it tightly above and around the new. This proceeding, necessary though it was, put the coping-stone on his endurance, and it was barely finished before he toppled forward on to his face and lay there motionless. Dimly, as consciousness left him, he heard the sound of the second series of volleys. * * * * *