"Mother, stand alone one minute," he said, in a hoarse whisper.
The old woman could not stand without support, but she fell back against the gallows timbers, looking wildly in his face. He waited for nothing, but sprang into the crowd with the bound of a panther, grappled the lad by the throat, just as his hand touched an end of the rope which had fallen over the scaffold. With the strength of a giant he lifted the boy high in the air with both hands, and pitched him far over the heads of the multitude. Here the urchin fluttered and turned, like some uncouth bird, till he was engulfed by the crowd, amid shouts of laughter and wild exclamations of astonishment.
Pale and trembling with rage, Rice turned upon the man who had instigated this dastardly act, but the craven took prompt warning, and plunged into the crowd, which, closing upon him, left Rice with his hand clenched and specks of foam trembling on his lips. A hand was laid heavily on his shoulder. Thinking it was some constable ready to arrest him, Rice turned, but only to meet a mild and elderly face, whose placid eyes looked gently into his. It was old Mr. Thrasher.
"Stop, stop, my friend. Let the laws be fulfilled without tumult. God may be doing a great work here."
"But what is man now doing, I should like to know?" cried the angry sailor. "Can your God look down on such work as this and not hate the people He has made? Look at this girl! look at the old woman yonder! My mother and my sister!"
"Your mother—sister! Then you are David Rice?"
"Yes, I am Dave Rice, that old woman's son. I hadn't seen her for nigh upon eight years, and this is how I find her!" cried Dave, shaking all over with a burst of grief; "and that's how I find my half sister, the sweetest little child that man ever sat eyes on."
Great tears trembled in his eyes and dropped down his cheeks, he wiped them away with the cuff of his sailor's jacket, dashing his hand down in a passion of self-contempt.
"What has the girl done? What does this all mean? If you know, tell me—do tell me!"
"Be calm—be still!" answered Thrasher, in a voice that carried soothing in its very tones. "She is innocent as a lamb."