And Denys got his crossbow ready, and tearing off his straw mattress, reared it before him and prepared to shoot the moment the door should open, for he had no hope any more would come singly, when they found the first did not return. While thus employed, Gerard was busy about the seated corpse, and to his amazement Denys saw a luminous glow spreading rapidly over the white face. Gerard blew out the candle; and on this the corpse's face shone still more like a glowworm's head. Denys shook in his shoes, and his teeth chattered. “What, in Heaven's name, is this?” he whispered. “Hush! 'tis but phosphorus, but 'twill serve.” “Away! they will surprise thee.” In fact, uneasy mutterings were heard below, and at last a deep voice said, “What makes him so long? is the drole rifling them?” It was their comrade they suspected then, not the enemy. Soon a step came softly but rapidly up the stairs: the door was gently tried. When this resisted, which was clearly not expected, the sham post was very cautiously moved, and an eye no doubt peeped through the aperture: for there was a howl of dismay, and the man was heard to stumble back and burst into the kitchen, here a Babel of voices rose directly on his return. Gerard ran to the dead thief and began to work on him again. “Back, madman!” whispered Denys. “Nay, nay. I know these ignorant brutes; they will not venture here awhile. I can make him ten times more fearful.” “At least close that opening! Let them not see you at your devilish work.” Gerard closed the sham post, and in half a minute his brush gave the dead head a sight to strike any man with dismay. He put his art to a strange use, and one unparalleled perhaps in the history of mankind. He illuminated his dead enemy's face to frighten his living foe: the staring eyeballs he made globes of fire; the teeth he left white, for so they were more terrible by the contrast; but the palate and tongue he tipped with fire, and made one lurid cavern of the red depths the chapfallen jaw revealed: and on the brow he wrote in burning letters “La Mort.” And, while he was doing it, the stout Denys was quaking, and fearing the vengeance of Heaven; for one mans courage is not another's; and the band of miscreants below were quarrelling and disputing loudly, and now without disguise. The steps that led down to the kitchen were fifteen, but they were nearly perpendicular: there was therefore in point of fact no distance between the besiegers and besieged, and the latter now caught almost every word. At last one was heard to cry out, “I tell ye the devil has got him and branded him with hellfire. I am more like to leave this cursed house than go again into a room that is full of fiends.” “Art drunk? or mad? or a coward?” said another. “Call me a coward, I'll give thee my dagger's point, and send thee where Pierre sits o' fire for ever.