Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/16

Rh dream of impossibilities, wild as those of the deeds of the Red Cross.

"Fire with me!" he said in his teeth. "Our lives hang on it."

She heard, and raised her weapon steadily as the priests rushed at them, while the Abruzzian lay like a mass of timber at their feet; the two shots echoed together, aimed at the mass of stretching hands, of brawny arms, of gleaming hatchets, of lifted clubs, that was within a hand's breath of them in the twilight of the lamplit hall. The mass wavered, quivered, staggered back; in that one breathless pause Erceldoune, with his arms round her so that she was held close against his breast, dashed forward with a rush as the lion will dash through the cordon of hunters who have fenced him in for the slaughter, hurling them back and front, left and right, by the impetus that bore him through them as swiftly, as resistlessly, as a scythe clears its way through the grasses.

One Cistercian, more rapid than the rest, swerved aside from that terrific charge which carried all before it like the sweep of cavalry, and threw himself against the door to swing the oak close ere the fugitives could reach it. "Seize him!" shouted Erceldoune in Servian. The hound had waited,