'I recognised in the voice which was now speaking that of the man of the
cottage.

'We owe it to ourselves to put it out of his power to harm us. Let him
sit up, Toussac, for there is no possibility of his escaping.'

Some irresistible force at the back of my neck dragged me instantly into
a sitting position, and so for the first time I was able to look round
me in a dazed fashion, and to see these men into whose hands I had
fallen. That they were murderers in the past and had murderous plans
for the future I already gathered from what I had heard and seen.
I understood also that in the heart of that lonely marsh I was
absolutely in their power. None the less, I remembered the name that I
bore, and I concealed as far as I could the sickening terror which lay
at my heart.

There were three of them in the room, my former acquaintance and two new
comers. Lesage stood by the table, with his fat brown book in his hand,
looking at me with a composed face, but with that humorous questioning
twinkle in his eyes which a master chess-player might assume when he had
left his opponent without a move. On the top of the box beside him sat
a very ascetic-faced, yellow, hollow-eyed man of fifty, with prim lips
and a shrunken skin, which hung loosely over the long jerking tendons
under his prominent chin. He was dressed in snuff-coloured clothes, and
his legs under his knee-breeches were of a ludicrous thinness. He shook
his head at me with an air of sad wisdom, and I could read little
comfort in his inhuman grey eyes. But it was the man called Toussac who
alarmed me most. He was a colossus; bulky rather than tall, but
misshapen from his excess of muscle. His huge legs were crooked like