Richard, Eldest Statesman, gazed in dark reflection upon the prisoner, meditating her sentence; the prisoner, young enough to tremble in the suspense, old enough to enjoy the nerve-tension and the moment of drama, gazed back at him.  Her hair lay in damp rings, and hung in rats’-tails about her forehead.  Her small face, with the silver-clear skin, stippled here and there with tiny freckles, was faintly flushed, and moist with the effort of her last great but unavailing run for freedom; her wide eyes were like brown pools scooped from the brown flow of the Ownashee.

“I adjudge,” said Richard, in an awful voice, “that the prisoner shall amass three buckets of the best gravel.  The same to be taken from the shallow by the seventh stepping-stone.”

The prisoner’s little brown arm, with a hand thin and brown as a monkey’s, went up; the recognised protest.

“Not the seventh, most noble Samurai,” she said, anxiously; “Won’t it do from the strand?”

“I have spoken,” replied the Eldest Statesman, inflexibly.

“Then I won’t!” exclaimed Christian; “I—­I couldn’t!  The river giddys me so awfully when I stand still on the stones—­”

“Prisoner!” returned Richard, “once the law is uttered, it can’t be unuttered!  Off you go!”

“Well then, and I will go!” said Christian, with a wriggle so fierce and sudden that it loosed the grip of her guards.  It is even possible that the ensuing lightning dart for freedom might have succeeded, but for the unfortunate fidelity of her allies, Rinka and Tashpy.  The one sprang at her brief skirt and caught it, the other got between her legs.  She fell, and was delivered again into the hands of the enemy.

Richard was not a bully, but Mrs. Sarah Battle was not more scrupulous than he in observing the rigour of the game.  Christian was manacled with the belt of her own overall, and was hauled along the golden, but despised, gravel of the river strand, to the spot whence the stepping-stones started.

“I’ll do this much for you,” said the Eldest Statesman, relaxing a little, “I’ll go first and carry the bucket.”

He dragged Christian on to the first of the big, flat, old stepping-stones, Judith assisting from the rear, and, with increasing difficulty, two more stones were achieved.  Then they paused for breath, and a sudden whirlwind of passion came upon the captive.  She began to struggle and dance upon the flat stone, madly endeavouring to free her hands, while she shrieked to the dastard Twins to come to her rescue.

“Cowards!  Cowards!  I hate you all—­”

“Better let her go,” whispered Judith, who knew better than her Chief what Christian’s storms meant.

Richard hesitated, and, as in a mediaeval romance, at this moment a champion materialised.

Not the Twins, lying like leopards along the higher boughs of a neighbouring alder, deeply enjoying the spectacle, but a boy, smaller than Richard, who came crashing through the bushes on the Coppinger’s Court side of the Ownashee.  Arrived, at the ford, he stayed neither his pace nor his stride, and before the Eldest Statesman, much hampered by his prisoner and the bucket, could put up any sort of defence, the unknown rescuer had sprung across the stepping-stones, and, catching him by the shoulders, had, by sheer force of speed and surprise, hurled him into the river.