I tried to send her away, fearing the warders would return and find she had disobeyed their order; but she would not go. The skin of my face was broken slightly where one of the men had kicked me—only a graze, for the force of the kick was spent before his foot touched me; and she insisted upon wiping the few drops of blood away. Her touch was that of a hand skilled in healing; and as she did what she could to cleanse the little wound, her eyes were full of tears and her face a living mask of pity and sympathy.
“In a moment half a dozen of his men rushed up
and dragged me off.”
“Go, go before they return and find you here,” I urged her.
“Is it not you who saved us all from the worst terrors of this awful night? Shall I desert you now you have brought this trouble on yourself?”
“Go, please go. You can do me no good and only harm yourself,” I begged her; but she would not go, and was still with me when the men came back to lead me out.
They seized her at once and, being brutes not men, handled her with cruel violence. I would have cursed them in my empty rage had it not seemed like a dishonour to her, in her calm quiet, almost saint-like resignation.
We were taken out together into a large quadrangle, and I caught my breath with a shiver of panic as I saw on the other side the whipping post surrounded by a group of men, two of whom held many-thonged, heavily knotted whips.
We were led across to it and a halt was made, and the two powerful men with the whips eyed us both with sinister, half-gloating gaze.
I was ashamed of my cowardice then. Grit my teeth as I would in a firm resolve to bear the awful punishment of the lash, I turned cold and sick at the thought of it. But the frail creature by my side was utterly unmoved. She was pale, but no paler than usual, and as calm and unmoved as the whipping post itself.