Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/12



flash of the steel tube in their sight, the pressure of its cold circle on the forehead of the nearest, staggered the monks a moment; they recoiled slightly one on another. They had measured the height and the girth of this stranger's limbs as they had sat with him at their meal, and they dreaded the tempest of his wrath. Erceldoune, holding her to him still with one arm, and covering the foremost with his aim, thrust himself against the mass and strove to pierce his way through them to the gates. A voice from behind cut the silence like a bullet's hiss.

"Cowards! Bolt the doors and trap them; we can pinion them then at our leisure!"

The speaker, as his figure towered in the shadow, was a gaunt Abruzzian giant, fierce-eyed, hollow