"They are here!" he shouted.

"On guard!" Claude stooped an inch lower, and with gleaming eyes, and feet set warily apart, waited the onset; waited with suspended breath for the charge that must come.

He could hear the gasps of the wounded man who lay on the uppermost step; and once close to him he caught a sound of shuffling, moving feet, that sent his heart into his mouth.

But seconds passed, and more seconds, and glare as he might into the black mouth of the staircase, from which the hood averted even the light of the stars, he could make out nothing, no movement, no sign of life! The suspense was growing intolerable.

And all the time behind him the alarm-bell was flinging "Doom! Doom!" down on the city, and a thousand sounds of fear and strife clutched at his mind and strove to draw it from the dark gap at which he waited, as a dog waits for a rat at the mouth of its hole.