But my father, white with passion, still advanced, the moonbeams dancing on his glittering blade. Joyce unslung his petronel, and covered his antagonist when within fifteen or twenty paces.
"Murderer!" shouted my father.
"As you will; I take no risks with steel," and immediately the report of the weapon burst upon my ears like a clap of thunder, while the trees were illuminated by the flash of the discharge. I shut my eyes and screamed in terror, and on opening them I saw--oh, merciful Heaven!--a convulsive form lying in the road, while the Roundhead stood watching me intently, the smoke from his petronel hanging round like a pall, and slowly ascending in the chill night air.
In an instant my terror left me and I became a demon. Grasping my oak cudgel in my hand, I ran at my father's murderer and rained blow after blow upon his head and body. It was but a forlorn attempt. His headpiece and armour received the blows as lightly as if they were from a straw, and with an oath he smote me heavily on the chest with the butt of his pistol, so that I reeled, fell backward across the body of my murdered sire, and struck my head on the frosty road. Multitudes of lights flashed before my eyes, followed by a red glare, and I lost all consciousness.
"I RAN AT MY FATHER'S MURDERER AND RAINED BLOW AFTER BLOW UPON HIS HEAD AND BODY"
[CHAPTER II--Of the Arrest and Escape of Increase Joyce]
When I came to, the first vague impressions of consciousness were the excited chatterings of what seemed to me a multitude of people. Then I saw the flashing of the light of a log fire lightening the dark oak beams of a room. I lay still, my temples throbbing like to burst, and my head swimming till I felt ready to vomit. Trying to collect my thoughts, I realized that I was in the kitchen of our own house. Then in an instant the whole scene of the tragedy in the pine-shrouded lane burst upon me in all its horror, and I raised myself on one elbow and feebly articulated: "Father, say it is but a dream!"
Gentle hands firmly put my head back upon a pillow, and a voice, which I recognized as that of Master Salesbury, the chirurgeon, said: "The lad will surely recover. No more letting of blood or cupping is needful. A hot posset will not come amiss, good Mistress Heatherington, ere I take my leave, for 'tis cold abroad."
"Thou art right, Master Salesbury," replied another, Sir George Lee, who, I afterwards found out, had been summoned as a Justice of the Peace to take down such evidence as could be obtained. "And as for you, sir, I must ask you to accompany me as my guest till this unfortunate matter can fully be gone into."