owd cut off the dragoons from the door
through which they had emerged. Sitting their horses, the little troop
came together, their sabres drawn, solid as a rock in that angry
human sea that surged about them. The moon riding now clear overhead
irradiated that scene of impending strife.

Flanagan, standing in his stirrups, attempted to harangue the mob. But
he was at a loss what to say that would appease them, nor able to speak
a language they could understand. An angry peasant made a slash at him
with a billhook. He parried the blow on his sabre, and with the flat of
it knocked his assailant senseless.

Then the storm burst, and the mob flung itself upon the dragoons.

"Bad cess to you!" cried Flanagan. "Will ye listen to me, ye murthering
villains." Then in despair "Char-r-r-ge!" he roared, and headed for the
gateway.

The troopers attempted in vain to reach it. The mob hemmed them about
too closely, and then a horrid hand-to-hand fight began, under the cold
light of the moon, in that garden consecrated to peace and piety. Two
saddles had been emptied, and the exasperated troopers were slashing now
at their assailants with the edge, intent upon cutting a way out of that
murderous press. It is doubtful if a man of them would have survived,
for the odds were fully ten to one against them. To their aid came now
the abbess. She stood on a balcony above, and called upon the people
to desist, and hear her. Thence she harangued them for some moments,
commanding them to allow the soldiers to depart. They obeyed with
obvious reluctance, and at last a lane was opened in that solid,
seething mass of angry clods.

But Flanagan hesitated to pass down this lane and so depart. Three of
his troopers were down by now, and his lieutenant was missing. He was
exercised to resolve where his duty lay. Behind him the mob was solid,
cutting off the dragoons from their fallen comrades. An attempt to go
back might be misunderstood and resisted, leading to a renewal of the
combat, and surely in vain, for he could not doubt but that the fallen
troopers had been finished outright.

Similarly the mob stood as solid between him and the door that led to
the interior of the convent, where Mr. Butler was lingering alive or
dead. A number of peasants had already invaded the actual building, so
that in that connection too the sergeant concluded that there was little
reason to hope that the lieutenant should have escaped the fate his own
rashness h