Read "The Red Cockade" by Stanley J. Weyman online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
With that word he thrust me towards the door that led to the inner hall and the postern; and, knowing, as I did, that every moment I delayed might stand for a life, and that within a minute or two at most the rear of the building would be beset, and my chance of egress lost, it was to be expected that I should not hesitate.
Yet I did. The main body of Froment's followers had flocked upstairs, whence they could be heard firing from the roof and windows. He stood almost alone in the middle of the floor; in the attitude of one listening and thinking, while a group of green ribbons, who seemed to be the most determined of his followers, hung growling about the barricaded door. Something in the gloomy brightness of the room, and the disorder of the barricaded windows, something in the loneliness of his figure as he stood there, appealed to me; I even took one step towards him. But at that moment he looked up, his face grown dark; and he waved me off with a gesture almost of rage. I knew then that I had but a small part of his thoughts; and that at this moment, while the edifice he had built up with so much care and so much risk was crumbling about him, he was thinking not of us, but of those who had promised and failed him; who had given good words, and left him to perish. And I went.