Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/538

 hour. D it, man! Lady Hamilton shall nurse you herself till you get well!"

A gleam came over the dying face, like a ray of sunlight gilding the close of a bleak winter's day.

"I have never been false," he murmured, "never false really in my heart. I swore to save you, George, life for life, and I have kept my oath. I shall not live to see Lady Hamilton again, but—but—you will tell her that it was my body which"

He turned fainter now, and lay half-propped against the seat he had lately occupied, holding Sir George's hand, and effectually preventing the baronet from taking any further part in the fray.

It is not to be supposed that the two seamen in the back of the coach had been idle witnesses of a tumult which so exactly coincided with their notions of what they termed "a spree." Protected from the fire of the horsemen by a pile of luggage on its roof, or, as Slap-Jack called it, by the deck-cargo, they had made an excellent defence, and better practice than might have been looked for with a brace of borrowed pistols, apt to hang fire and throw high. The guard, too, after a careful and protracted aim, discharged his blunderbuss, with a loud explosion; and the result of their joint efforts was, that the highwaymen, as the last-named functionary believed them, were beaten off. Blood Humphrey's horse was shot through the flank, though the poor brute made shift to carry his rider swiftly away. Black George had his ankle-bone broken, but managed to gallop across the moor after his comrade, writhing in pain, and with his boot full of blood. Bold lay dead on the ground. There was but one of the assailants left—a well-armed man in a cassock, who had kept somewhat in the background; and his horse, too, was badly wounded behind its girths.

Sir George was occupied with Florian, but the others sprang down to take the last of their foes captive; ere they could reach him, however, he had leaped into the bay mare's saddle, and was urging her over the heather at a pace that promised soon to place him in safety, for the bay mare was the fastest galloper in Yorkshire, and her rider knew it was a race for life and death.