With bitter curses on their lips for his brutality they drew their swords.
“Ha! ha! my braves!” said Phillip, pale as a ghost, and looking half idiotic and wild; “ha! ha! my braves! I see, my wife hath many ready to defend her. Come on, then, one and all.”
“So be it,” said Augustus Fumbleton, drawing his “toasting fork,” and assailing Phillip.
“The man who lays his hand upon a woman except in kindness, is a scoundrel,” he added.
Phillip was more like a maniac than a man.
But just as the husband and the lover were about to engage, Fanny threw herself in between the combatants.
“Hold!” she cried, in a voice of pain, and with blood streaming down her features.
“Hold!” she cried, “Phillip Redgill! husband! murderer! if you will spill blood, shed mine!”
“Murderer!” muttered Phillip, with chattering teeth! “murderer?”
“Yes, murderer!” gasped Fanny, with a firm, defiant tone; “spirits of the dead haunt you both night and day.”