"Jerusalem and ginger nuts, but that was a shot well put in!" exclaimed this personage, whose voice there was no mistaking, and the two horrified and helpless creatures found that they were in the hands of that gang of the insurgents—the most dastardly and lawless—led by Ithuriel Smash.
Their first emotions on finding themselves in the centre of such a savage throng, were undoubtedly those of extreme terror and shrinking delicacy; but Madame Darnel for a time forgot her naturally womanish apprehensions, collected the powers of her mind, and throwing up her veil, confronted the whole band, which mustered more than a hundred men.
Among that mob were many on whom Aurelia and her mother had conferred countless acts of kindness and charity in sickness and health; but, like low-born and ungrateful cowards, they hung back now, when they should have rushed to her defence.
Certainly, to some of the French insurgents, the appeal of Madame Darnel, a handsome woman about forty years of age, with an intelligent and sweet expression in her well-cut features, and every way a person of refinement and delicacy, was not without a little effect; but the announcement of Smash that her daughter was his affianced wife who "intended to slope with one of the 'tarnal Britishers," against whom they were in arms, deprived poor Aurelia of all sympathy, and a roar of menace escaped his hearers.
"Is this conduct your return for my kindness and charity to a creature so immensely beneath me?" asked Madame Darnel.
"As whom?" asked Smash.
"You, fellow!"
"D—n your cussed impudence! Now then, Aurelia, come along, white face. You look as if you required a box of our New York 'Never-say-die or Health-restoring pills,'" said Smash; and a shriek burst from the girl as his coarse fingers with their long spiky nails grasped her tender arm, and she was literally torn away from her horrified mother, who fainted, and was borne off by some of the better disposed to the house of the curé.
Followed by the armed rabble, the helpless Aurelia incapable of all resistance, was dragged through the village of St. Eustache, and taken a literal prisoner, or victim, to her mother's house which adjoined, the seigneury of the Darnels, wherein Colonel Smash had established his headquarters.
For a moment or two she thought to conciliate her chief captor.