360 An Adventure near Granville. [ApRIL, 
pers, that began again, low as before, but quick and impatient. The 
crisis was evidently at hand. It was a terrible moment !—I do not 
hesitate to say so—a terrible moment! Had I been armed, it had been 
something ; the consciousness of having the means to make a struggle 
must stir the blood, whatever may be the odds; but to be locked up in 
the same room with a band of midnight murderers, defenceless, such a 
moment is terrible ! 
The whispering grew more and more frequent. Had instant death 
been the consequence, I could not have read a moment longer. The 
book might be said almost to drop from my hand, and, scarcely allowing 
myself to breathe, lest I should lose a single syllable, I listened to the 
almost inaudible whispers, till my ears tingled with the intenseness of 
the application. I heard the cocking of a pistol, and knew the time was 
come,—when, to my infinite surprise, the door was gently lifted off its 
hinges, the screw having evidently been drawn and left loose for that 
purpose. Whether it was the effect of the air, upon the door being 
opened, or my moving, or only chance, I know not; but just then the 
curtain on that side of the bed, which I had tucked back when I first 
began reading, now fell forwards, and I could only see through it the 
shadows of two figures, without being able to distinguish the persons. 
As I lay with my eyes fixed in that direction, the light, which one of 
them held up as if examining the room, rendered their forms yet plainer. 
I could see that one of them carried a weapon of some sort in his hand, 
and that both were creeping stealthily towards my bed. ‘Then there was 
a pause. I thought, from the action of the hand, that the man who car- 
ried the drawn knife or dagger gave a sign to those under the bed: at all 
events, they were in motion. I heard a slight rustling, and, turning my 
eyes to the right, saw through the curtains on that side the shadows of no 
less than six men, rising successively from under. the bed. The natural 
instinct of self-defence would have prompted me to spring into the very 
midst of them, and make a struggle for my life. But, before I could 
move, the shadows on my right flitted rapidly round my bed—a loud 
shriek followed—and, on throwing back the curtains, I saw Madelon and 
the tailor struggling in the hands of the police. 
I now learned that the sudden deaths of my four predecessors in the 
possession of the house had long excited suspicion, and the rather as the 
property was always sold for the life-time of the occupant. This had led 
the Sub-prefect to imagine, as indeed was afterwards confessed by Made- 
lon, that the tailor tempted purchasers by the cheapness of his house, 
and, having pocketed the money, he then made away with them as soon 
as possible, that he might resume the property, and have the benefit of 
a fresh sale on the same conditions. But, however strong might be the — 
Prefect’s suspicions, the tailor managed his affairs too cunningly for him — 
to get any thing like certainty on the subject ; and I might have perished, 
as my predecessors had done, to make room for another tenant, had not 
a little girl overheard the tailor settling with Madelon the time and 
manner of my murder. The child, naturally enough, lost no time in 
communicating what she had just heard to her parents ; and they, as a 
matter of course, carried the tale to the police. But, besides that she 
was very young—she was scarcely seven years old—she had, partly 
from fright, and partly perhaps from deficient understanding, contra- 
dicted herself so often in her story, that the Prefect had deemed it pru- 
dent to get more certain evidence by seizing them in the very attempt to 
