"What on earth were you doing at that hour?"
"Not quite so many questions at once, friends, if you please. My brain is still a little waterlogged, and my thoughts work slowly. I only remember sitting down about ten o'clock to read a novel, and the first thing that roused me was the gun, which for the moment I took for the attack of the enemy of whom I was reading. I rushed out, half expecting to find the tavern surrounded, and to have to risk my life in its defence, and instead—"
"Instead," put in Winifred Anstice, very quietly, "you risked your life to save some one else,—Nora Costello, the Captain's sister, spent the whole morning in tears, because Dr. Cricket would not let her leave her room to go and tell you how grateful she was."
"Hysterical, I suppose," said Flint.
Winifred, who had opened her lips to say something more, shut them closely again, and sat back with the air of a person determined to have no further share in the conversation.
Dr. Cricket hastened to occupy the floor. "A charming girl—upon my word, a charming girl—if she is a Hallelujah lassie."
"A what?" ejaculated Brady.
"A Hallelujah lassie—Feminine of Salvation Soldier, don't you know! Why, she had one of the coal-scuttle bonnets hanging by its draggled strings round her neck when Flint pulled her in, and a number of 'The War Cry' was in the pocket of her dress, when we stripped it off."
"Oh," said Brady, with a touch of disappointment in his tone, "I took her for a different sort of a person; she looked quite the lady."