Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/344

Rh them so at bay that none dared be the first to pass him and swing to afresh the unloosed bolts and chains. They forgot the hound as they saw the prisoner of their Church, and rushed on to her with a shrill yell. There were men among them who had flung the priestly robes over lives of foul crimes and unsuccessful villanies; and men who had hated her for that mere feminine forbidden loveliness that here, in their stone-locked den, they never looked on; and men who would have killed her, were it only that such service might find them fair favour in the eyes of the great dignitary, who held their fates in the hollow of his hand. These threw themselves headlong towards Erceldoune as he came out of the darkness of the corridor into the entrance-square, low-roofed and broad, with the arch of the door filling its farther end.

He paused, and levelled his pistol full in the eyes of the foremost.

"Let me pass, or you are dead men."

END OF VOL. II.