“It’s on in earnest now!” said Freeman grimly, and turned his pistol again at the window on the right. “Come on--we’ll hold the upper floor!” Sonya cried to Drexel and sprang up the stairway. They rushed into Ivan’s room, whence the crash had come. The end of a ladder stuck through the demolished window and scrambling up it was a gendarme. Drexel fired; the man fell, and none was so bold as to spring to his deadly place upon the ladder. The crashing at the downstairs door sounded louder. They rushed back to the stairway. The door was almost down. “We can hold this floor but a moment longer!” shouted Freeman. “Come up here, then!” called Drexel. “The stairway’s easier to defend!” He sprang into a bedroom and dragged out a chest of drawers, which he placed at the head of the stairs as a barricade, and this Sonya reinforced with a mattress which she dragged after him. Crash! Crash! went the battering-ram. “Come up!” shouted Drexel. The landlord plunged up the stairway and over the barricade. But Freeman crouched before the door, like a panther ready for the spring. Crash! The splintered door flew from its hinges. “There’s nothing left but a dash for life!” Freeman cried up to them, and the dare-devil sprang over the door and straight out among the gendarmes. “Don’t kill him--we want his secrets!” roared the captain. There was the sound of a whirlwind scuffle without, which testified to the terrorist’s desperate strength. But it quickly ceased. “Handcuff him!” the captain ordered. “Now in after the others!” The three crouched down and their pistols looked blackly over the barricade. There was a wild rush of gendarmes through the door and up the stairway. The three pistols spoke as one. Two men fell. But the gendarmes rushed on up, firing as they came; their bullets thudded into the barricade and the walls behind the defenders. Bang--bang--bang went the three pistols. The gendarmes faltered before the deadly fire, then fell back. “Up after them!” roared the captain, himself safely without, and poured on his men dynamic curses and more dynamic threats. Their evil faces gleaming, the gendarmes charged again. The three met them with a rapid fire, the pistols’ flame and smoke almost in the gendarmes’ faces. But they surged on up. Two fell dead against the breastworks. A huge, ferocious fellow following stepped upon their bodies and vaulted the barricade. He died in mid air. But he had given death for death, and fell upon the landlord’s body. [Illustration: _A huge, ferocious fellow vaulted the barricade. He died in mid air_] But Sonya and Drexel had not time to glance at the dead. Bang--bang--bang went their pistols; and before this fierce, protected fire the gendarmes again turned and fled pell-mell from the house. The captain first cursed his men, then his voice raged in through the open door: “We’ll have you out of there in five minutes!” And to his men he said: “When they come out, seize the woman and kill the foreigner.”