“Gently, gently, fair and softly, my birdie,” said Greatorix; “surely you have not forgotten that you sent for me to meet you here.  Well, I am here, and I am not such a fool as to come for nothing!”

The very impossibility of words steeled Winsome’s heart,

“I send for you!” cried Winsome; “I never had message or word with you in my life to give you a right to touch me with your little finger.  Let me go, and this instant, Agnew Greatorix!”

“Winsome, sweetest girl, it pleases you to jest.  Have not I your own letter in my pocket telling me where to meet you?  Did you not write it?  I am not angry.  You can play out your play and pretend you do not care for me as much as you like; but I will not let you go.  I have loved you too long, though till now you were cruel and would give me no hope.  So when I got your letter I knew it was love, after all, that had been in your eyes as I rode away.”

“Listen,” said Winsome eagerly; “there is some terrible mistake; I never wrote a line to you—­”

“It matters not; it was to me that your letter came, brought by a messenger to the castle an hour ago.  So here I am, and here you are, my beauty, and we shall just make the best of it, as lovers should when the nights are short.”

He closed his arms about her, forcing the strength out of her wrists with slow, rude, masculine muscles.  A numbness and a deadness ran through her limbs as he compelled her nearer to him.  Her head spun round with the fear of fainting.  With a great effort she forced herself back a step from him, and just as she felt the breath of his mouth upon hers her heart made way through her lips.

“Ralph!  Ralph!  Help me—­help!  Oh, come to me!” she cried in her extremity of terror and the oncoming rigour of unconsciousness.

The next moment she dropped limp and senseless into the arms of Agnew Greatorix.  For a long moment he held her up, listening to the echoes of that great cry, wondering whether it would wake up the whole world, or if, indeed, there were none to answer in that solitary place.

But only the wild bird wailed like a lost soul too bad for heaven, too good for hell, wandering in the waste forever.

Agnew Greatorix laid Winsome down on the heather, lifeless and still, her pure white face resting in a nest of golden curls, the red band of her mother’s Indian shawl behind all.

But as the insulter stooped to take his will of her lips, now pale and defenceless, something that had been crouching beastlike in the heather for an hour, tracking and tracing him like a remorseless crawling horror, suddenly sprang with a voiceless rush upon him as he bent over Winsome’s prostrate body—­gripped straight at his throat and bore him backward bareheaded to the ground.