The lad quailed before the thunder-and-lightning of the man's wrath. "Why can't we sally?" sullenly. The Parson shot a hand toward the window. The boy followed his pointing finger. In the open, behind the wall, was a camp-fire, a group of soldiers squatting round it, arms piled. To right and left, embracing the cottage, a chain of sentries ran, tall men all in tall-plumed bear- skins. Old Piper was right. A cordon indeed! "Grenadiers of the Guard!" rumbled the Parson in the boy's ear, rolling his r's like a _feu de joie_. "Marksmen to a man; veterans all; and half of them decorated." Grenadiers of the Guard! the men of the Bridge of Lodi, of the Battle of the Pyramids and Mount Tabor, of Hochstadt and Hohenlinden. Kit recalled the tops of the _Cocotie_ swarming with riflemen, and old Ding-dong's surprised disgust. Now he understood. On the success of this venture hung Napoleon's world-projects. _Coûte que coûte_, he had told Mouche, he must bring off this coup. So he was employing on it the pick of the first Army the world had ever seen. As he thought of the issues at stake, the boy's soul fainted within him. How could he, Kit Caryll, aged fifteen, and hovering on the brink of tears, stand up against the Victor of Marengo? CHAPTER XLVIII THE DOXIE'S DAUGHTER I The boy's long face, anxious before, grew haggard now. It wore the look of one with the enthusiasms of a saint across whose path Sin, the Insurmountable, has fallen suddenly. "We're done," he said, husky and white. His words revived the other. True man that he was, despair in the boy's heart quickened the courage in his own. "Never say die till you're dead," he cried, squaring his shoulders-- "that's the Englishman's motto." His spirit rose to meet the occasion. "Our theatrical friend outside there's no fool. But--but--but! there's just one element he's not reckoned with." "What?" cried Kit, hanging on his words. The Parson dropped head and voice. "Who saved you from the _Tremendous_?" he whispered. "Who handed you up a cliff a goat couldn't climb?--who brought you to this house? --who put the flag-idea into your head, and brought it off?" The Parson's words made sudden confusion in the lad's mind. It came to him with a shock of surprise to find such triumphant faith in this ruddy fighting-man. "And why d'you think of all the houses in the world He sent you to this one?" the other continued. "Because of you, sir." The Parson frowned, and approached his lips to the lad's ear. "_Because it's got a secret passage!_" This most matter-of-fact explanation flashed the laughter to the boy's eyes. "I mean it," said the other earnestly. "Ain't you noticed anything about the floor of the kitchen?" "It sounds hollow." "It is hollow. It's built over an old decoy-pond." In a few words the Parson outlined the history of the secret passage.