I understood the scene better now. The horsemen, stern, bearded
Switzers for the most part, who eyed the rabble about them with
grim disdain, and were by no means chary of their blows, were all
in his colours and armed to the teeth. The order and discipline
were of his making: the revenge of his seeking. A grasp as of
steel had settled upon our friend, and I felt that his last
chance was gone. Louis de Pavannes might as well be lying on his
threshold with his dead servant by his side, as be in hiding
within that ring of ordered swords.

It was with despairing eyes we looked at the old wooden houses.
They seemed to be bowing themselves towards us, their upper
stories projected so far, they were so decrepit. Their roofs
were a wilderness of gutters and crooked gables, of tottering
chimneys and wooden pinnacles and rotting beams, Amongst these I
judged Kit's lover was hiding. Well, it was a good place for
hide and seek--with any other player than DEATH. In the ground
floors of the houses there were no windows and no doors; by
reason, I learned afterwards, of the frequent flooding of the
river. But a long wooden gallery raised on struts ran along the
front, rather more than the height of a man from the ground, and
access to this was gained by a wooden staircase at each end.
Above this first gallery was a second, and above that a line of
windows set between the gables. The block--it may have run for
seventy or eighty yards along the shore--contained four houses,
each with a door opening on to the lower gallery. I saw indeed
that but for the Vidame's precautions Louis might well have
escaped. Had the mob once poured helter-skelter into that
labyrinth of rooms and passages he might with luck have mingled