et me go!" Strange to say, she cried even that but softly; as who
should say, "If you will not, kill me quietly, kill me without noise!"
Ay, even then, with the blood running down her face, and with those eyes
more cruel than men's eyes hemming her in, she was thinking of the
mother whom she had sheltered so long.

"Let me go! Let me go!" she repeated.

"Witch, you shall go!" they answered ruthlessly. "To hell!"

"Ay, with her dam! To the water with her! To the water!"

"Look for the devil's mark! Search her! Again, Martha! Bring her down!
Bring her down, and we'll soon see whether----"

Then he reached them. The man, one of the few present, who had bidden
them search her fell headlong on his face in the gutter, struck behind
as by a thunder-bolt. The great Bible flew one way, the hag's stick flew
another--and in its flight felled a second woman. In a twinkling Claude
was on the steps, and in the heart of the crowd stood two people, not
one; in a twinkling his arm was round the girl, his pale, furious face
confronted her tormentors, his blazing eyes beat down theirs! More than
all, his iron bar, brandished recklessly this way and that, threatened
the brains of the man or the woman who was bold enough to withstand him.

For he was beside himself with rage. He learned in that moment that he
was of those who fight with joy and rejoicing, and laugh where others
shake. The sight of that white, bleeding face, of that hanging hair, of
that suppliant arm, above all, the sound of that patient "Let me go! Let
me go!" that expected nothing and hoped nothing, had turned his blood to
fire. The more numerous his opponents--if they were men--the better he
would be pleased; and if they were women, such women, unsexed by hate
and superstition, as he saw before him, women looking a millionfold more
like witches than the girl they accused, the worse for them! His arm
would not falter!

It seemed of steel indeed. The bar quivered like a reed in his grasp,
his eyes darted hither and thither, he stood an inch taller than at
other times. He was like the war-horse that sniffs the battle.

And yet he was cool after a fashion. He must get her home, and to do so
he must not lose a moment. The vantage of the steps on which they stood,
raised a hand's breath above their assailants, was a thing to be
weighed; but it would not serve them if these cursed women mustered, and
the cowardly crew before him throve to a mob. He must home with her. Bu