"She gasped.
"'Great snakes! As if, in a lonesome place like this, it wasn't the easiest thing in the world to rush the house!'
"'Rush the house!' I repeated, for the Americanism was new to me.
"But Daisy only went into hysterics on the sofa, and ten seconds later I had grasped the meaning of her words.
"The door opened and the intruders entered. There were six of them, all dressed in black, as men who go to funerals. I should have wondered at this if I had had the time to wonder, but I had none. There was no parley, no attempt at parley. They knew their rôle and I knew mine. I hurled the teacup at the foremost of them and gashed his forehead badly. The milk-jug followed, breaking the front teeth of the second. Then they ran in upon me and we fought at close quarters.
"I hurled the teacup at the foremost of them."
"Such a fight as it was! Kicking upwards, I caught one of them under the chin, so that he lay for dead upon the floor. A second, getting the sole of my boot in the pit of his stomach, fell, doubled up, in the remotest corner of the room. A third, however, with fiendish ingenuity, hurled a chair between my legs. I tripped and fell, half dazed with the blow that my head got as I tumbled. They rushed upon me, pinioned me, and tied my hands and feet. The fight had hardly lasted a minute, and, conquered by superior numbers, I was at their mercy.
"'Run for help, Marie,' I had shouted to my old housekeeper at the beginning of the struggle, and, though she was deaf and could not hear me, what she saw sufficed to send her, screaming loudly, down the hill.
"One of my assailants, however, pursued her, caught her, put his hand over her mouth, lifted her in his arms, and brought her back and locked her in her bedroom. I saw her kicking, as he carried her past the open door, and then my senses left me.