"Let me go—let me go, I tell you, or by the father that made me, I'll send my sword through half-a-dozen of you," almost shrieked Ashwoode.
"Hold him—hold him fast—consume you, hold him back!" shouted Blarden; "he's a forger!—run for constables!"
Several did run in various directions for peace officers.
"Wring the sword from his hand, why don't you?" cried one; "cut it out of his hand with a knife!"
"Knock him down!—down with him! Hold on!"
Amid such exclamations, Ashwoode at length succeeded, by several desperate efforts, in extricating himself from those who held him; and without hat, and with clothes rent to fragments in the scuffle, and his face and hands all torn and bleeding, still carrying his naked sword in his hand, he rushed from the room, and, followed at a respectable distance by several of those who had witnessed the scuffle, and by his distracted appearance attracting the wondering gaze of those who traversed the streets, he ran recklessly onward to the "Cock and Anchor."
CHAPTER LXIX.
THE BOLTED WINDOW.
Followed at some distance by a wondering crowd, he entered the inn-yard, where, for the first time, he checked his flight, and returned his sword to the scabbard.