"Thank God!" I ejaculated, but I could not leave my post to see her.
Some of the men were talking loudly, and pointing; others ran off in various directions. Shortly, they returned, carrying dead branches and heaps of straw. They made for the other side of the mill, keeping well out of pistol shot. Plainly they meant to set the mill on fire and burn us out. It would blaze quickly, for it was slightly built, and the timber old and dry, and I feared that the place would be too hot for us long before a large number of people were drawn to the spot; but our best plan was to stay where we were as long as might be possible. The bulk of our enemies now sat on the ground to await the result of the fire. I might have broken a hole through the mill wall, but our safety—such as it was—depended on there being only one opening to guard. So, keeping one eye on the enemy, I looked at Mistress Goel's hurt. It was a gash over the eye, and had bled copiously, but the bleeding had ceased. She insisted on cutting open my sleeve, from which the knife had fallen, after sticking there some time, and found a deepish cut, and my sleeve soaked with blood. She bound up the wound with a strip from her dress. Now we heard a great crackling and roaring outside. The fire had taken hold.
"Frank," said Mistress Goel, and my heart thrilled at the word and the tone. "Frank, promise that you will kill me rather than let me fall into their hands. I would ask for a pistol to do it myself, but you may have need of them. Promise me, by all that is most sacred to you."
"I promise you that you shall not be taken alive, by the most sacred of all things to me—my love for you."
The heat of the mill grew stifling. Snaky flames came through the cracks and crevices, and hissed upward.
"We must try for life," I said, and pulled away the sacks and the door.
The enemy awaited us. All at once, they turned the other way, and the head constable rode into view, followed by a posse of young men, some on horseback, some on foot. Then the crowd fled a dozen ways, and I carried my fainting lady into the midst of a group of cheering, laughing friends.
CHAPTER VIII
The task of answering the hundred and one questions of our rescuers fell upon Mistress Goel, for I could not speak distinctly, my cheek and lips being so swollen. Two of my friends hoisted me upon their shoulders, in spite of my growling resistance, while other two made "a chair" for her with their arms and sticks, and we were carried with shouting to the vicarage, terrifying the good folk there no little by the noise. When my aunt saw Mistress Goel's blood-stained face and my puffed cheek, she fell to laughing and crying in a breath, and cried out that I was the most reckless fellow in the world, and not to be trusted with the care of a lady. The doctor clasped his daughter to his breast, and then held her off to examine her hurt, and turned to glare at me fiercely, as if I had done the mischief. Oddly enough it was the vicar who called for sponge and water, bandages, plaister, and the like; recommended the doctor to lose no time in attending to our wounds; imposed silence on the dozen who were babbling all at once, and, in short, put us into order.