e which I had the power to still
with death. He looked into the muzzles of my two pistols, and his
rosy colour never wavered, and he shouted out again to me his
command to surrender and stand aside in the name of the King, and I
stood still and made no reply. I knew that I could take two lives
and then struggle unarmed for perhaps a moment's space, and that all
the time saved might be precious for those in the house. At all
events, it was all that I could do for Mary Cavendish.

I held my pistols and watched his eyes, knowing well that all action
through having its source in the brain of man, gives first evidence
in the eyes. Then the time came when I saw his impulse to charge
start in his eyes, and I fired, and he fell. Then I fired again, but
wildly, for everything was in motion, and I know not whom I hit, if
any one, then I felt my own right leg sink under me and I knew that
I was hit. Then down on my knees I sank and put one arm through the
great latch of the door, and thrust out with my knife with the free
hand, and stout arms were at my shoulders striving to drag me away,
but they might as well for a time have tried to drag a bar of steel
from its fastenings. I thrust out here and there, and I trow my
steel drew blood, and I suppose my own flowed, for presently I was
kneeling in a widening circle of red. I cut those forcing hands from
my arm, and others came. It was one against a multitude, for the
rabble after hitting wild blows as often at their friends as at
their enemies had broken and fled, except those who were taken
prisoners. But the women stayed until the last and fought like wild
cats, with the exception of Madam Tabitha Story, who quietly got
upon her old horse, and ambled away, and cut down her own tobacco
until daybreak, pressing her slaves into service.

As for the other gentlemen, they were fighting as best they could,
and all the time striving vainly to gather the mob into a firm body
of resistance. None of them saw the plight I was in, nor indeed
could have helped me had they done so, since there were but seven
gentlemen of us in all, and some by this time wounded, and one dead.

I knelt there upon the ground before the door, slashing out as best
I could with one hand, and they closed faster and thicker upon me,
and at last I could no more. I felt a stinging pain in my right
shoulder, and then for a minute my senses left me. But it was only
for a moment.

When I came to myself I was lying bou