The distance was growing shorter, shorter and shorter.

Some of the officers looked toward the Marquis.

Even his nervous horse seemed to have caught the spirit of the moment, for he was at last still.

The old man sat there immobile, his lips pressed, his eyes fixed on the approaching troops and shining like sword-blades in the sunlight--horse and man carved, as it were, out of the rock of the mountains.

Presently that high, thin, sharp voice rang out.