"Are you?"
"No; answer me!" he repeated impatiently.
"He was—very rough. I don't think I am hurt," she breathed.
"You plucky little thing!"
She pressed her cheek against his arm.
"Are you contented with me?" she whispered.
The shots had ceased. After a long interval of quiet, Warner ventured to creep to the window and look through a corner of the ragged lattice blind. Little by little he raised himself to his knees, peered out and finally over.
The ladder lay there just below in the garden path; the men were gone. And, even as he looked, the staccato noise of departing motor cycles broke out like a startling volley of rifle fire in the night.
For an hour he stood on guard there, with the girl Philippa crouching beside him on the floor. From time to time he called cautiously:
"All well here!"