"Knock him down! Brain him! but don't hurt the woman," shouted some one in the crowd. And some other one, armed with a heavy iron poker, dealt him a crashing blow upon the bare head. And Sybil's brave defender relaxed his protecting hold upon her form, fell broken, bleeding, perhaps dying at her feet.
A piercing scream broke from her lips. She stooped to raise her husband, but was at that instant seized by the officer, and forced from the spot.
"Shame! shame!" cried a bystander. "Take the handcuffs off the poor woman, and let her look at her husband."
"Poor woman indeed!" exclaimed Jones, the officer, "she's the biggest devil alive! Do you know what she's done? Not only murdered a beautiful lady; but blown up a church and killed half a dozen men!"
A shudder shook the crowd. Could this be true? A score of questions was put to Bailiff Jones. But he would not stop to answer any one of them. Calling his coadjutor Smith to help him, they each took an arm of Sybil and forced her from the scene.
Faint, speechless, powerless under this sudden and awful accumulation of misery, the wretched young wife was torn from her dying husband and thrust into a stage-coach, guarded by three other bailiffs, and immediately started on her return journey.
Resistance was useless, lamentations were in vain. She sat dumb with a despair never before exceeded, scarcely ever before equalled in the case of any sufferer under the sun.
There were no other passengers but the sheriff's officers and their one prisoner.
Of the first part of this terrible homeward journey there is but little to tell. They stopped at the appointed hours and stations to breakfast, dine, and sup, and to water and change the horses, but never to sleep. They travelled day and night; and as no other passenger joined them, it was probable that the sheriff's officers had engaged all the seats for themselves and their important charge.
During that whole horrible journey the hapless young wife neither ate, drank, slumbered, nor spoke; all the faculties of mind and body, all the functions of nature, seemed to be suspended.