“Le voiles! Le voiles!” cried a voice from the opposite side. Morton raised his gaze from Gawtrey; the casement was darkened by the forms of his pursuers--they had burst into the room--an officer sprang upon the parapet, and Gawtrey, now aware of his danger, opened his eyes, and as he moved on, glared upon the foe. The policeman deliberately raised his pistol--Gawtrey arrested himself--from a wound in his side the blood trickled slowly and darkly down, drop by drop, upon the stones below; even the officers of law shuddered as they eyed him--his hair bristling--his cheek white--his lips drawn convulsively from his teeth, and his eyes glaring from beneath the frown of agony and menace in which yet spoke the indomitable power and fierceness of the man. His look, so fixed--so intense--so stern, awed the policeman; his hand trembled as he fired, and the ball struck the parapet an inch below the spot where Morton knelt. An indistinct, wild, gurgling sound-half-laugh, half-yell of scorn and glee, broke from Gawtrey’s lips. He swung himself on--near--near--nearer--a yard from the parapet.
“You are saved!” cried Morton; when at the moment a volley burst from the fatal casement--the smoke rolled over both the fugitives--a groan, or rather howl, of rage, and despair, and agony, appalled even the hardest on whose ear it came. Morton sprang to his feet and looked below. He saw on the rugged stones far down, a dark, formless, motionless mass--the strong man of passion and levity--the giant who had played with life and soul, as an infant with the baubles that it prizes and breaks--was what the Caesar and the leper alike are, when the clay is without God’s breath--what glory, genius, power, and beauty, would be for ever and for ever, if there were no God!
“There is another!” cried the voice of one of the pursuers. “Fire!”
“Poor Gawtrey!” muttered Philip. “I will fulfil your last wish;” and scarcely conscious of the bullet that whistled by him, he disappeared behind the parapet.
“Gently moved By the soft wind of whispering silks.”--DECKER.
The reader may remember that while Monsieur Favart and Mr. Birnie were holding commune in the lane, the sounds of festivity were heard from a house in the adjoining street. To that house we are now summoned.