mble
companion of my sorrow."

"Right-oh!" said Lord Dogwood, with a brutal laugh.

"Enough," exclaimed Wynchgate, and seizing Winnifred by the waist, he
dragged her forth out of the house and out upon the street.

But something in the brutal violence of his behaviour seemed to kindle
for the moment a spark of manly feeling, if such there were, in the
breasts of his companions.

"Wynchgate," cried young Lord Dogwood, "my mind misgives me. I doubt if
this is a gentlemanly thing to do. I'll have no further hand in it."

A chorus of approval from his companions endorsed his utterance. For a
moment they hesitated.

"Nay," cried Winnifred, turning to confront the masked faces that stood
about her, "go forward with your fell design. I am here. I am helpless.
Let no prayers stay your hand. Go to it."

"Have done with this!" cried Wynchgate, with a brutal oath. "Shove her
in the coach."

But at the very moment the sound of hurrying footsteps was heard, and a
clear, ringing, manly, well-toned, vibrating voice cried, "Hold! Stop!
Desist! Have a care, titled villain, or I will strike you to the earth."

A tall aristocratic form bounded out of the darkness.

"Gentlemen," cried Wynchgate, releasing his hold upon the frightened
girl, "we are betrayed. Save yourselves. To the coach."

In another instant the six noblemen had leaped into the coach and
disappeared down the street.

Winnifred, still half inanimate with fright, turned to her rescuer, and
saw before her the form and lineaments of the Unknown Stranger, who had
thus twice stood between her and disaster. Half fainting, she fell
swooning into his arms.

"Dear lady," he exclaimed, "rouse yourself. You are safe. Let me restore
you to your home!"

"That voice!" cried Winnifred, resuming consciousness. "It is my
benefactor."

She would have swooned again, but the Unknown lifted her bodily up the
steps of her home and leant her against the door.

"Farewell," he said, in a voice resonant with gloom.

"Oh, sir!" cried the unhappy girl, "let one who owes so much to one who
has saved her in her hour of need at least know his name."

But the stranger, with a mournful gesture of farewell, had disappeared
as rapidly as he had come.

But, as to why he had disappeared, we must ask our reader's patience for
another chapter.

CHAPTER VI

THE UNKNOWN

The scene is now shifted, sideways and forwards, so as to put it at
Muddlenut Chase, and to make it a fortn