‘You are my prisoner.’

I stared up and along the pistol barrel and met her eyes.  They looked down on me disdainfully, with no mercy in them, but (it seemed to me) a certain curiosity.  A slight frown puckered her brows.  She had spoken in a cold, level voice, and if her colour was pale, her manner and bearing showed no trace of agitation.

‘Would seem,’ said I, ’there is no choice.  I submit, madam—­to your pleasure, but not to the rabble you lead.’

At this her eyebrows lifted a little.  ‘A gentleman?’ I heard her say, but rather to herself than to me.

‘To the extent,’ I answered, ‘of having a distaste for pitchforks.’

She made no reply to this, but turned about on her men who were murmuring and calling to one another to cut my throat.  ’I think you heard me say that this officer is my prisoner.  The man who forgets it I will have flogged and afterwards shot.  And now stand back, if you please.’

I had made a motion to hand her my sword, but she signed to me to keep it, and rode off towards the patrol, leaving the crowd to stare at me.  Being unsure how far her authority prevailed with them, I stuck to my embrasure, and kept an eye lifting for danger, while I wiped, as carelessly as might be, the sweat from my forehead—­for the work had been hot while it lasted.  I had laid out a couple of these yokels in good earnest, and while their comrades dragged them away, and, propping them against the parapet opposite, called for water to bathe their wounds, I became unpleasantly sensible of my own hurts.  The stab in my upper arm, though it bled little, kept burning as though the pitchfork had been dipped in poison; and from the less painful scratch on the ribs I was losing blood; I could feel it welling under my shirt, and running warm down the hollow of my groin.  Loss of blood, they say, will often clarify a man’s eyesight and quicken his other faculties; or it may be that, as the morning sun ate up what remained of the fog, all around me—­the bridge and the persons upon it, the trees up the valley, the river tumbling between—­on a sudden grew distinct to the view.  At any rate, in my memory, as out of a blurred print, springs the apparition of my lady as she came riding back from her parley with the patrol, with the sunlight on her flaming feather and habit of red velvet, and her horse’s shadow moving clear-cut along the granite parapet.  Nay, it seemed that her voice, too, had a sharper edge as she spoke to me.

’I have explained to the captain, yonder, that you are my prisoner.  Which is your horse?—­the dark bay, I think.’  For they had captured mine as well as poor Hutson’s, and a servant held the pair by the bridge-end.

‘It is, madam.’

She motioned to the man to lead him forward.  ‘Now mount,’ she said; ‘and follow me, if you please.  You may keep your sword.’

Mounting, to a man in my plight, was no such easy matter; but she had walked forward to give some directions about the wounded men, and did not perceive the pain it cost me.  Yet (I told myself) she must have seen me take my wound; and her indifference angered me.  Having mounted and found my stirrups, I shut my teeth hard.