"Take that thing away!" she said at last, pointing with a fierce repulsion to the dead soldier at her feet. "Take him and begone every one of you! Is it for girls to teach you the lesson how to be men and not brutes?"
In absolute silence, and with something like fear in their faces, the other soldiers, thoroughly sobered, came and carried off the corpse of their companion, and withdrew from the house. Only one significant word was spoken by the chief of the band ere he finally withdrew.
"Colonel Kirke will have to hear of this, mistress," he said, addressing Mary with more of respect in his glance than there had ever been before. She was standing in precisely the same spot and in the same attitude, and she merely bent her head very slightly as she heard the words.
"Tell him everything!" she exclaimed suddenly, as the man turned to go. "Do you think I am afraid?"
He gave her a look of admiration, bowed, and retired. It was then and only then that her mother and sister broke into lamentation and tears; and Lady Bridges, holding her to her breast, sobbed in the bitterness of a mother's anguish.
"Oh, Mary! Mary! What hast thou done? And what can they do to thee? Oh, that man of iron! that cruel, cruel Kirke! And is it before him thou must go?"
Mary kissed her mother, and freed herself gently from her embrace; her nerves were still strung tensely up. She felt no qualm of fear.
"Mother," she said, "there was no one else to defend you and Eleanor. None else would have dared to lift a hand against a soldier of the King's. Was I to stand by and see and hear such things? God in heaven alone knows whether it was my act or his that did him to death. But even if I did strike him to the heart, is not he a man of blood? And is it not written that they who take the sword shall perish by the sword?"