“I shall offer no resistance,” I replied, making it sound as much like a concession on my part as I could.
I put a chair for Gatrina and she sat down, while I stood beside her.
The next minute the soldiers came crowding into the room with the sergeant and men whose uniforms we had taken in their midst. They were all talking at once and gesticulating at once angrily, making a sort of Babel of tongues, in which fierce denunciations of me were disquietingly loud and conspicuous.
The officer in charge of the newcomers exchanged a few words with the lieutenant, describing excitedly the heinous deed of which I had been guilty. I disliked the look of him intensely—a heavy, red-haired bully of a man, and when he addressed me he did so in a hectoring tone difficult to hear without anger.
“So we’ve arrived in time to take you red-handed, my fine fellow, eh?”
“Red-handed? In doing what?” I asked, meeting his beetle-browed stare firmly.
“Don’t try to bluster with me. I’m the wrong man,” he cried, hotly. “It won’t pay you, I promise you.”
“He was one of them, captain. I’ll swear to him. And that’s the dog that flew at me,” said the sergeant.
“Take the beast out and shoot it,” ordered the captain, brutally.
Chris was in no immediate danger of that fate, however. Two of the soldiers went toward him but he shewed his great fangs and looked so dangerous, that they stopped and stepped back; and no other volunteers offered for the job.