He sprang to the ground, and to the front.

He caught up his robe and waved his hand, and the rabble, as if impelled by a single will, rolled forward in a huge one-fronted thundering wave, before which the two handfuls of pikemen--afraid to strike, yet afraid to fly--were swept away like straws upon the tide.
But against the solid walls and oak-barred door of the house the wave beat, only to fall back again, a broken, seething mass of brandished arms and ravening faces.

One point alone was vulnerable, the window, and there in the gap stood Tavannes.

Quick as thought he fired two pistols into the crowd; then, while the smoke for a moment hid all, he whistled.
Whether the signal was a summons to his men to fight their way back--as they were doing to the best of their power--or he had resources still unseen, was not to be known.

For as the smoke began to rise, and while the rabble before the window, cowed by the fall of two of their number, were still pushing backward instead of forward, there rose behind them strange sounds--yells, and the clatter of hoofs, mingled with screams of alarm.