Now they are in the room.  There is no sound; but from the open window, looking upon the carriage-road, there is the tramping of horses, drowning all sounds in the room.  They are nearly to the large canopied bed between the open windows, when Jones, who is nearest, discovers a startled apparition half rising from the bed.  He is discovered by the figure at the same instant, and a piercing scream, so loud, prolonged, and ear-splitting that it echoes over the house, ends the wild dream of the marauders.  Wesley reels in panic.  But Jones is an old campaigner.  If he can’t have victory, there must be no recapture.  He rushes at the white figure, and snatches—­Rosa, limp, nerveless, and swooning!

“See who’s in the bed!—­I’m damned if you haven’t brought us to the wrong room—­see, quick!”

But there was no necessity for seeing.  Mrs. Atterbury uttered a stifled cry:  “Help! help! murder!”

“You, Boone, know the place; stand by me and I’ll see that we are not nabbed; but you’ve made a nice mess of the affair.”

But the comments of the indignant Jones were suddenly drowned in a blood-curdling sound in the doorway:  the savage, suppressed growl of a dog, and the responsive imprecations of Number Two.  With this came the apparition of two figures, at sight of which Jones darted to the window, the two figures, Jack and Dick, following to his right and left.

“Save your powder, whoever you are.  Fire at me, and you hit the young woman.  I don’t know who she is, but her body is my protection.”  Saying this, Jones coolly, determinedly retreated backward to the window; but Dick, hardly hearing, and certainly not comprehending, had come within arm’s length of the two, somewhat to the left of Jones.

“Don’t fear, Rosa,” Dick exclaimed, between his teeth.  “I can see you.  Ah, ah!” Then four reports, that sounded as one, split the air.

Rosa broke from the thick cloud of smoke as a fifth report rang out, and a scream of death went up between the bed and the door where Jack stood.

At the instant Dick spoke, Jack, in the doorway, heard an exclamation at his side.  He half turned, and as he did so his eye caught the outlines of a man, with a shining something raised in the air, coming toward him from the bedside.  He pointed his own pistol at the figure, there were three simultaneous reports, and the oncoming figure fell with a hoarse cry of pain.  The man at Jack’s back now cried: 

“Get through the window; they’re coming through the house!”

“It’s only a dog; come on.”

Then there was a sound of flying feet in the wide passage.

“Are you hurt, Rosa?  Tell me—­did they hit you?  Speak, oh, speak!” It was Dick’s voice, in a convulsive sob.  Now, the boy again, that danger was gone.