On the other side of the way, alike unnoticed by Olive and her pursuers, a man walked on steadily, never losing sight of them for a moment. At last, as she came into a quiet portion of the street, the two young men drew near her. They were simply what I have said, "fast." They perhaps meant no real harm, and thought it would be good fun to frighten her.
"'Where are you going, my pretty maid?'" said one, the bolder and handsomer of the two.
"'My face is my fortune, sir, she said,'" responded the other, in a voice which the wine he had taken for dinner made a little thick and unsteady.
"You ought not to be out alone," the first began again. "You are quite too young and too pretty."
"That she is," a loud, stern voice answered, "when there are such vile hounds as you ready to insult an unprotected girl."
Surely it was a voice Olive knew, only stronger and more resolute than she had ever heard it before.
She turned suddenly, and the gas light struck full on her flushed, frightened, pretty face, which the drooping hair shaded. The man, who had crossed the street to come to her rescue, looked at her a moment, and then, as if involuntarily, came to his lips the old, fond words, the last she had ever heard him speak,—
"Father's little one!"
He opened his arms, and she, poor tired girl crept into their shelter. The two young men stood by waiting, enough of the nobility of the old blood in them to keep them from running away, though their nerves tingled with shame. George Haygarth spoke to them with quiet, manly dignity.
"When I saw you following this girl I had no idea she was my girl, whom I had not seen for five years. It was enough for me that she was a woman. To my thinking it's a poor manhood that insults women instead of protecting them. I meant to look out for her, and, be she who she might, you should not have harmed her."