Bab, who was nearest the dancer, rose to her feet quickly, and then sat down rather limply.
“The knife, the knife!” she said to herself. “It is the highwayman’s knife!”
And now the handsome dancer was kneeling at Mollie’s feet offering her the scarf.
He had risen and was bowing to the company, when whir-r-r! something had whizzed past his head, just scratched his forehead and then planted itself in the wooden frame of the window behind him.
Was Barbara dreaming; or had she lost her senses?
The knife in the wall was the same, or exactly like the knife José had been using in the dance.
In a moment everything was in wild confusion.
“Go into the house, ladies!” commanded the major.
The four boys leaped from the piazza, to run down the assassin, so they thought, but the figure vaguely outlined for an instant in the shadows of the trees, was as completely hidden as if the earth had opened and swallowed it up.
José, in a big chair in the drawing room, was being ministered to by Miss Sallie and the girls, while the major, with a glass of water, was standing over him on one side and the housekeeper, on the other, was binding his head with a linen handkerchief.