It was in vain for us to flee. Turn where we would, pursued and pursuer were there.
"Don't flinch! Don't flinch!" Godefroy kept shouting. "They'll take it for fear! They'll kill you by torture!"
Almost on the words a bowstring twanged to the fore and a young girl stumbled across Jack Battle's feet with a scream that rings, and rings, and rings in memory like the tocsin of a horrible dream. She was wounded in the shoulder. Getting to her knees she threw her arms round Jack with such a terrified look of helpless pleading in her great eyes as would have moved stone.
"Don't touch her! Don't touch her! Don't touch her!" screamed Godefroy, jerking to pull Jack free. "It will do no good! Don't help her! They'll kill you both—"
"Great God!" sobbed Jack, with shivering horror, "I can't help helping her—"
But there leaped from the mist a figure with uplifted spear.
May God forgive it, but I struck that man dead!
It was a bootless sacrifice at the risk of three lives. But so was Christ's a bootless sacrifice at the time, if you measure deeds by gain. And so has every sacrifice worthy of the name been a bootless sacrifice, if you stop to weigh life in a goldsmith's scale!
Justice is blind; but praise be to God, so is mercy!
And, indeed, I have but quoted our Lord and Saviour, not as an example, but as a precedent. For the act I merited no credit. Like Jack, I could not have helped helping her. The act was out before the thought.