“Silence!”
The command broke her sentence in two, and her words died away in muffled indistinctness, suggesting that force had been used to secure obedience.
Then a light was kindled; there was some scuffling along the passage; and they all appeared to enter a room.
I paused, undecided what to do. The thing had a very ugly look; but I had had quite enough trouble to satisfy me for one night. I didn’t want to go blundering into an affair which might be no more than a family quarrel; especially as I was trespassing in the house.
A few seconds later, however, came the sound of trouble; a blow, a groan, and the thud of a fall.
I caught my breath in fear that the woman had been struck down.
But the next instant a shrill piercing cry for help rang out in her voice, and this also was stifled as if a hand had been clapped on her mouth.
That decided things for me.
Whatever the consequences, I could not stop to think of them while a woman was in such danger as that cry for help had signalled.