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the sharp-toothed portcullis they passed; and behind them, to the rattling of chains and the creaking of rusty windlasses, the drawbridge rose. O'Rourke, as he was hurried across a courtyard, tried to smile at this grim travesty; but deep in his heart lurked an uneasiness. He had not in the least anticipated all this. Otherwise, he had chanced a quick death at the hands of the man in the carriage. But now, evidently, he was to die; and all possibility of escape had been cut off by the raising of that draw. He stood, for all he knew to the contrary, without a friend in that huge pile of masonry set upon a cliff on a mountain side, concerning any portion of which he knew not the least thing in the world.

Well, his part was to hold up his head and take what had been prepared for him with the easiest grace he could assume. Time out of number he had laughed back into the jaws of death; and, after all, it was childish of him to assume that Duke Victor would dare a murder in order to remove from his path so insignificant a stumbling block as the O'Rourke—the empty-handed Irish adventurer.

But assuredly he might confidently count upon a fighting chance, in the end. Or—and this occurred to him for the first time—he was merely to be kept a prisoner until after the duke's marriage to Madame la Princesse had been consummated.