I heard a clamor of voices, the shrieks of women, the excited shouts of huntsmen giving orders. Keepers rushed in among the hounds with their clubs. In a few moments the dogs were driven back crouching and snarling among their masters. I stood alone by the poor stag, with a host of eyes upon me; then, for the first time, I began to tremble.
“Here,” said a stout old squire, whose white hair fell like snow from under the close hunting cap, “here, George Irving, you have won the right to cut his throat. Thomas, where is the knife?”
A keeper came forward, presenting a sharp hunting-knife.
“You will not—you will not,” I said, clasping my hands, and standing face to face with the youth who had saved me. I felt that my lips were quivering, and that great tears were dropping like hail-stones down my burning cheeks—“you will not.”
“No,” answered the youth, taking the knife and holding it toward me. “It is not mine, this brave child was in first. I found her, like the stag, at bay, braving the hounds. Tell me, shall not the life of this animal be hers?”
A loud hallo answered him, echoed by a chorus of musical female voices.
The youth reached forth his knife again, but I rejected it. The stag was safe, and my heart so full of joy, that I felt it breaking all over me. The noble face before me brightened as if from the reflection of mine, and for the first time I saw that it was a very young man who had saved me. Young and—but I will not describe him—for upon his features at that moment there was something of which no language can give the least idea.
I felt the blood rushing up to my face, for now all things became clear, and I knew that a score of strange eyes were wondering at me. The feather in my hat was broken, and fell prone upon my shoulder; my skirt had been badly wrenched and mangled by the dogs; their muddy foot-prints were trampled all over it; a morbid sense of the beautiful made me shrink with shame, as I saw all those eyes fixed upon my dilapidated state.
“Where is Jupiter?” I said, turning to my young friend.
“Will you search for him, I should like to go away?”