The Archdeacon paused with his drooping finger half raised over the other innocent face at his breast, Thorkell's features twitched, and the tears ran down the white cheeks of his wife.
In an instant the baby-lamb had hobbled away, and before the Archdeacon had restored the child to the arms of blind Kerry or mumbled the last of the prayers, there came the hum of many voices from the distance. The noise came rapidly nearer, and as it approached it broke into a great tumult of men's deep shouts and women's shrill cries.
The iron hasp of the lych-gate to the churchyard was heard to chink, and at the same moment there was the sound of hurrying footsteps on the paved way. The company that had gathered about the font broke up abruptly, and made for the porch with looks of inquiry and amazement. There, at the head of a mixed throng of the riff-raff of the parish, bareheaded men, women with bold faces, and children with naked feet, a man held a young woman by the arm and pulled her toward the church. He was a stalwart fellow, stern of feature, iron gray, and he gripped the girl's bare brown arm like a vise.
"Make way there! Come, mistress, and no struggling," he shouted, and he tugged the girl after him, and then pushed her before him.
She was young; twenty at most. Her comely face was drawn hard with lines of pain; her hazel eyes flashed with wrath; and where her white sun-bonnet had fallen back from her head on to her shoulders, the knots of her dark hair, draggled and tangled in the scuffle, tumbled in masses over her neck and cheeks.
It was Mally Kerruish, and the man who held her and forced her along was the parish sumner, the church constable.
"Make way, I tell you!" shouted the sumner to the throng that crowded upon him, and into the porch, and through the company that had come for the christening. When the Archdeacon stepped down from the side of the font, the sumner with his prisoner drew up on the instant and the noisy crew stood and was silent.
"I have brought her for her oath, your reverence," said the sumner, dropping his voice and his head together.
"Who accuses her?" the Archdeacon asked.
"Her old mother," said the sumner; "here she is."