lumsiness, throw one out.
And he meant mischief--yes, that he did. I saw it in his eyes. I
suppose his sulky rustic jealousy was a-fire at a few little
civilities to that poor little wife of his. Any way, when he bore
me down like the swing of a windmill, he drove his sword home. Talk
of his being innocent! Why should he never look whether I were dead
or alive, but fling me headlong into that pit?"

Anne could not but utter her eager defence, but it was met with a
sinister smile, half of scorn, half of pity, and as she would have
gone on, "Hush! your pleading only fills up the measure of my
loathing."

Her heart sank, but she let him go on, listening perhaps less
attentively as she considered how to take him.

"In fact," he continued, "little as the lubber knew it, 'twas the
best he could have done for me. For though I never looked for such
luck as your being out in the court at that hour, I did think the
chance not to be lost of visiting the garden or the churchyard, and
there were waiting in the vault a couple of stout Normans, who were
to come at my whistle. It seems that when I came tumbling down in
their midst, senseless and bleeding like a calf, they did not take
it quite so easily as your champion above, but began doing what they
could for me, and were trying to staunch the wound, when they heard
a trampling and a rumbling overhead, and being aware that our
undertaking might look ugly in the sight of the law, and thinking
this might be pursuers, they carried me off with all speed, not so
much as stopping to pick up the things that have made such a
commotion. Was there any pursuit?"

"Oh no; it must have been the haymakers."

"No doubt. The place was in no great favour with our own people;
they were in awe of the big Scot, who is in comfortable quarters in
my grave, and the Frenchmen could not have found their way thither,
so it was let alone till Mistress Martha's researches. So I came to
myself in the boat in which they took me on board the lugger that
was waiting for us; and instead of making for Alderney, as I had
intended, so as to get the knot safely tied to your satisfaction,
they sailed straight for Havre. They had on board a Jesuit father,
whom I had met once or twice among the Duke of Berwick's people, but
who had found Portsmouth too hot to hold him in the frenzy of
Protestant zeal on the Bishops' account. He had been beset, and
owed his life, he says, to the fists of the Breton and N