still clung to his arms, conscious that if he once forfeited his hold
until he had secured a retreat, he should be taken at disadvantage. But
Maximilian, now drawing a petronel which hung at his belt, cocked it as
rapidly as his embarrassed motions allowed him. The assassin faltered,
conscious that a moment's relaxation of grasp would enable his
antagonist to turn the muzzle over his shoulder. Maximilian, on the
other hand, now perfectly awake, and with the benefit of that self-
possession which the other so entirely wanted, felt the nervous tremor
in the villain's hands; and, profiting by this moment of indecision,
made a desperate effort, released one arm, which he used with so much
effect as immediately to liberate the other, and then intercepting the
passage to the stairs, wheeled round upon his murderous enemy, and,
presenting the petronel to his breast, bade him surrender his arms if
he hoped for quarter.

The man was an athletic, and, obviously, a most powerful ruffian. On
his face he carried more than one large glazed cicatrix, that assisted
the savage expression of malignity impressed by nature upon his
features. And his matted black hair, with its elf locks, completed the
picturesque effect of a face that proclaimed, in every lineament, a
reckless abandonment to cruelty and ferocious passions. Maximilian
himself, familiar as he was with the faces of military butchers in the
dreadful hours of sack and carnage, recoiled for one instant from this
hideous ruffian, who had not even the palliations of youth in his
favor, for he seemed fifty at the least. All this had passed in an
instant of time; and now, as he recovered himself from his momentary
shock at so hateful an expression of evil passions, great was
Maximilian's astonishment to perceive his antagonist apparently
speechless, and struggling with some over-mastering sense of horror,
that convulsed his features, and for a moment glazed his eye.