Ay it was like a holy eye opening suddenly on human crime and human passions. Many a scene of blood and crime that pure cold eye has rested on; but on few more ghastly than this, where two men, with a lighted corpse between them, waited panting, to kill or be killed. Nor did the moonlight deaden that horrible corpse-light. If anything it added to its ghastliness: for the body sat at the edge of the moonbeam, which cut sharp across the shoulder and the ear, and seemed blue and ghastly and unnatural by the side of that lurid glow in which the face and eyes and teeth shone horribly. But Denys dared not look that way. The moon drew a broad stripe of light across the door, and on that his eyes were glued. Presently he whispered, "Gerard!" Gerard looked and raised his sword. Acutely as they had listened they had heard of late no sound on the stair. Yet there--on the door-post, at the edge of the stream of moonlight, were the tips of the fingers of a hand. The nails glistened. * * * * * Presently they began to crawl, and crawl, down towards the bolt, but with infinite slowness and caution. In so doing they crept into the moonlight. The actual motion was imperceptible, but slowly, slowly, the fingers came out whiter and whiter: but the hand between the main knuckles and the wrist remained dark. Denys slowly raised his crossbow. He levelled it. He took a long steady aim. Gerard palpitated. At last the crossbow twanged. The hand was instantly nailed, with a stern jar, to the quivering doorpost. There was a scream of anguish. "Cut," whispered Denys eagerly, and Gerard's uplifted sword descended and severed the wrist with two swift blows. A body sank down moaning outside. The hand remained inside, immovable, with blood trickling from it down the wall. The fierce bolt slightly barbed had gone through it, and deep into the real door-post. [Illustration: DENYS SAW A STEEL POINT COME OUT OF THE ABBOT] "Two," said Denys, with terrible cynicism. He strung his crossbow, and kneeled behind his cover again. "The next will be the Abbot." The wounded man moved, and presently crawled down to his companions on the stairs, and the kitchen door was shut. There nothing was heard now but low muttering. The last incident had revealed the mortal character of the weapons used by the besieged. "I begin to think the Abbot's stomach is not so great as his body," said Denys. The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when the following events happened all in a couple of seconds. The kitchen door was opened roughly, a heavy but active man darted up the steps without any manner of disguise, and a single ponderous blow sent the door not only off its hinges, but right across the room on to Denys's fortification, which it struck so rudely as nearly to lay him flat. And in the doorway stood a colossus with a glittering axe.