“Huzza for Marion—Remember his oath—Drive on the dogs!”
These were the shouts of the assailants, to which the royal officers replied,
“Stand fast for old England. Down with the rebels. Stand fast!”
For a moment the retreating fugitives rallied, and made a stand. This was almost opposite the window where Kate remained with her father, in spite of the danger, chained, as if by fascination, to the spot. A reinforcement of soldiers, at the same instant, came running down the street, and their companions parting right and left to make way for them, they gained the front and threw in a withering volley on the foe. These, not expecting such a sudden check, fell into some disorder.
“Now charge on the rascals,” cried a voice, and Col. Campbell sprung to the van, waving his sword. “Give them the bayonet, lads, and the field is ours.”
The issue of the combat hung trembling in the balance. The assailants showed signs of falling back, and Kate’s tumultuous hopes died within her, when suddenly the tramp of horses’ feet was heard, and a body of cavalry came thundering up the street. At their head, on a powerful charger, rode a form that Kate instantly recognized, as the lurid light of the distant fire played redly on it. Need we say it was that of Preston? His uplifted sabre flashed in the wild glare like a blood-red meteor.
“The oath of Marion,” he shouted, in a voice of thunder. “Strike home for revenge.”
This sudden apparition, and more than all that stirring shout, seemed to infuse a strange and wild frenzy into the assailants, so lately about to turn.
“The oath of Marion!” exclaimed a stalwart figure at Preston’s side, as he smote a royal grenadier to the earth with a single stroke.
The cry was caught up by the crowd. “The oath of Marion—the oath of Marion!” rung from a hundred voices: and the assailants, with that cry, rushed on the royal troops like an avalanche rushes from the sky. But foremost of all rode Preston and his serjeant, while their terror-struck enemies around them went down, with every sweep of their good swords, like grain on a harvest-field.