I dashed after him at headlong speed. He sprang into the building and bounded up the stairs--Claudine’s wild screams continued--and I heard her calling “William!” Although Aylmer had cleared one flight of steps before I entered, I overtook him as he jumped with his intended victim on the roof; seized him with one arm, and twisting my hand into his collar, half strangled him, and forced him to drop the child. Upon me the full fury of his rage was turned, and a deadly struggle commenced. In height and weight we were equally matched; but his maniac strength was superhuman. After a desperate conflict of a minute, both came heavily to the ground locked in each other’s arms, the madman uppermost. In turn, he attempted to choke me, and I as desperately resisted. Apparently, the phrenzy of his rage rendered him insensible to pain; for though I caught his hand within my teeth until they met, the maniac would not let go his murderous hold. My strength failed, I found myself fainting, another minute and his triumph would have been complete, but fortunately, an alarm had been given that brought assistance, and three of the gendarmes who formed the prison guard, rushed on the tower roof with drawn swords, tore Aylmer away, and endeavoured to secure him. With a marvellous effort the madman shook his assailants off, and answered their order to surrender with a laugh of wild derision--“Ha! ha! ha!” he shouted, “you fancy that Aylmer will be a prisoner. Tell your commander, that if that sailor fellow had not marred my scheme of vengeance, his fair girl would have been what in another moment I shall be--a shattered mass of lifeless flesh--and now for the leap of liberty! Ha, ha!” he roared out convulsively, and, with a demon’s laugh, before any could lay hands upon him, the maniac vaulted across the platform of the tower, and we heard, some twenty seconds afterwards, the dull sound his lifeless body made as it fell on the paved court below. I had received some severe bruises in the deadly struggle with, the unfortunate madman; and my throat and neck were blackened by the pressure of his knuckles. The gendarmes supported me to the governor’s house, wine was given me, and the surgeons of the fortress were called in. From Madame, I received abundantly the ardent tokens of a woman’s gratitude in tears and kisses, while the old republican, her husband, held my hand in his, and, with the speechless eloquence of the eye, thanked me in the silence of a heart too full to give utterance to its feelings, for saving the treasure of his soul.