That little moment was worth all the perils and risks of the past months; and if I could have had my own way, I would have stood there, with my little lady’s hand clutching my arm, for a month.
It was impossible they could recognise me, with my back to the light, happening upon them in so unlooked-for a way. But when I said, “Trust to me, Miss Kit,” her hand tightened on my sleeve with a quick pressure, and she said,—
“Barry! thank God we are safe now!”
I was a proud man that night as I fought my way through the crowd with two distressed ladies under my wing, and a fist and a foot for any one who so much as dared to touch the hem of their garments.
Mrs Gorman became so faint in a little that I was forced, as soon as we were out of the thick of the crowd, to call a vehicle.
The soldiers at the end of the street, when they saw who our party was, and heard that we were passengers in the overturned carriage, let us go by; “for we had been already well overhauled at the barrier,” said they.
Once clear—and she kept her hand on my arm all the time—Kit said,—
“Then you are alive still, Barry?”
“Ay, Miss Kit; and ready to die for you.”
“This is a dreadful place!” said she with a shiver, looking up at the high houses we passed; “but it was worse before you found us.”