CHAPTER I

THE PRECIPICE


The angry yelling of a French mob rose outside the court--a low, ominous
roar, pierced here and there with individual execrations, and the
prisoner turned his head and listened. There was a suspicion of contempt
on his face, drawn though it was. What did they care for justice? It was
only the instinct to hunt the persecuted that urged them. Were he proved
innocent ten times over, they would hardly be convinced or cease from
their reviling.

But he knew that no proof of innocence would be forthcoming. He was
hedged around too completely by adverse circumstances for that.
Everything pointed to his guilt, and only he himself and one other knew
him to be the victim of a deliberate plot devised to compass his
destruction. He was too hopelessly enmeshed to extricate himself, and the
other--the only man in the world who could establish his innocence--was
the man who had set the snare.

Bertrand de Montville, gunner and genius, had faced this fact until he
was in a measure used to it. There was to be no escape for him. He, who
had dared to scale the heights of Olympus and had diced with the gods,
was to be hurled into the mire to rise therefrom no more for ever. He had
climbed so high; almost his feet had reached the summit. He had completed
his invention, and it had surpassed even his most sanguine hopes of
success. At four-and-twenty he had been acclaimed by his superiors as the
greatest artillery engineer of his time. His genius had won him a footing
that men more than twice his age, and far above him in military rank,