Each descent they made Gerald begged might be their last, but Muriel more eagerly pleaded they might have yet another. It was so splendid, she thought, to see the rowdies, balked in their malice, run thundering into each other, while Gerald received rounds of applause. What taskmaster ever drove so hard as does the female partizan, who desires nothing for herself but merely the glory of her champion?
They made the descent again. It was to be really the last time. "Just this once more;" but it proved the once too often. They started immediately behind a sled which shot down like lightning, and insured a clear course at the going off; but presently one slid by on their right, and they had to swerve to avoid it, and then there passed one on their left which almost grazed them. They had scarcely escaped when another came thundering down behind them. Gerald veered aside as well as he could, but still as it came on it was only by flinging himself against the foremost passenger that he avoided being run over, and it cost him his balance. In the instant, while he was still in poise, he was able to lay a goodly stroke with his guiding stick across the head of the steersman of the buccaneer, and then he fell out of his seat and rolled down the steep. The sled had turned cross-wise to the incline, and rolled over with the three who were its crew; and Muriel startled, alarmed, and with the toboggan turned aslant, fell out likewise, and slid downward with the toboggan atop.
Gerald reached the bottom pell-mell among the brawling, kicking, and swearing cargo of the sled, who set on him in concert ere yet he had well reached his feet, when Muriel's falling amidst them, covered by the over-turned toboggan, dispersed the combatants for an instant, and gave Gerald time to recover his guard. Then with a howl the three rushed upon the one, or rather on the two, for they knocked down Muriel, half risen, and trampled the toboggan to pieces in rushing over her. Gerald was ready with one from the shoulder, delivered squarely in the jaw, to knock down the first, but the other two sprang on him together, and he would have fared ill if one from the crowd had not leaped into the fray with blazing eye, clenched fist, and gnashing teeth, and a growl of sssacrrré and chien, as he felled one ruffian with a blow under the ear and attacked the other. The first was now up again, assaulting Gerald with foot and fist, and calling his fellows in the crowd to come and help him, when the ministers of the law appeared in the persons of two burly constables, who caught Gerald and his succourer by the collar, and stood over the last felled of the assailants while the other two ran away.
It was a "brache of the pace," they declared, and all must come to the station, stretching out a hand to seize Muriel by the muffler--an act which nearly upset Gerald's composure, and brought him into collision with the police; but fortunately at that moment Considine intervened.
He had been spending an enchanted hour near the top of the hill with Miss Matilda, swathed in rugs--all but her head--looking down upon the sports, and chatting pleasantly while he buzzed round her, near enough to hear and answer, but far enough off to let the fumes of his cigar travel elsewhere. Something said in the crowd hard by had drawn their attention to the slide. "Is not that Muriel?" Matilda had exclaimed, jumping to her feet; and then the collision had come, and the upset, and they both hurried down the bank to arrive on the scene at the same moment as the police.
"You need not take the young lady into custody, my man," said Considine, assuming his grand military manner--learned in "the war"--so effective with policemen, who, like other disciplined beings, seem to love being spoken down to. "Here is my card, and I write the lady's address on the back. She will appear before the magistrate whenever he desires."
"Roight, yur haunur!" said the man, coming to "attention," and saluting.
"And this gentleman will give you his card, too, and promise to appear when wanted," a suggestion which was also complied with, and Gerald was liberated from custody.
"And this young fellow, who has behaved like a man, can I do nothing for him?"
"This is Pierre Bruneau," cried Matilda, "our farmer's son at St. Euphrase. So good of you, Pierre, to come to Miss Muriel's rescue. I did not know you were in Montreal."