He tried to soothe her, he tried to pacify her; keeping himself between her and the prostrate man.
“I won’t,” he said. “I won’t. You are quite safe. You are quite safe.”
He had fired with a hand as steady as a rock, but his voice shook now.
“Oh, don’t let me go!” she repeated hysterically. “Oh, don’t let me go!”
“You are safe! you are safe!” he assured her, holding her more closely, and yet more closely to him.
And when Bishop and Long Tom Gilson, and three or four others, came up at a run, breathing fire and slaughter, he was still supporting her; and she was crying to him, in a voice that went to the men’s hearts, “Not to let her go! Not to let her go!”
Alas, too, that was the sight which met the poor chaplain’s swimming gaze when he came to himself, and, groaning, felt the bump between his eyes—the bump which he had got in her defence.
CHAPTER XXXVI
TWO OF A RACE
It was Thursday, and three days had passed since the Sunday, the day of many happenings, which had cleared up the mystery and restored Henrietta to Mrs. Gilson’s care. The frost still held, the air was brisk and clear. The Langdale Pikes lifted themselves sharp and glittering from the line of grey screes that run southward to Wetherlamb and the Coniston Mountain. A light air blew down the lake, ruffling the open water, and bedecking the leafless woods on Wray Point with a fringe of white breakers. The morning was a perfect winter morning, the sky of that cloudless, but not over-deep blue, which portends a long and steady frost. Horses’ hoofs rang loud on the road; and rooks gathered where they had passed. Men who stopped to talk hit their palms together or swung their arms. The larger and wiser birds had started betimes for salt water and the mussel preserves on the Cartmel Sands.
The inquest on the gipsy had been held, but something perfunctorily, after the fashion of the day. Captain Clyne and the chaplain had told their stories, and after a few words from the coroner, a verdict of justifiable homicide had been heartily given, and the jury had resolved itself into a “free and easy” in the tap-room; while the coroner had delivered himself of much wisdom, and laid down much law in Mrs. Gilson’s snuggery.