We helped Gallagher down to the boat and he and I were taken aboard.
The wound in my shoulder was but a scratch.
It was enough, however, to let me in for a share of the honors with Gallagher.
In truth I had done nothing but precipitate by my arrival the final tragedy; but love, they say, is blind.
It was impossible for me to persuade Evelyn that I had not been the hero of the occasion.
She could appreciate the courage of the three men who had chosen death rather than to join Bothwell in his nefarious plans, but she was caught by the melodramatic entry I had made upon the stage.
"You were one against fourteen, but that didn't stop you at all. Of course the others were brave, but——"
"Sheer nonsense, my dear. Any one can shout 'Villain, avaunt!' and prance across the sand, but there wasn't any pleasant excitement about looking Boris Bothwell in the eye and telling him to shoot and be hanged. That took sheer, cold, unadulterated nerve, and my hat's off to the three of them."
She leaned toward me out of the shadow, and the light in her eyes was wonderful.
With all the innocence of a Grecian nymph they held, too, the haunting, wistful pathos of eternal motherhood.