Page:Joan, the curate.djvu/221

Rh he's aught to you, we'll let him go!" roared Ben the Blast, in his thick, hoarse voice, which seemed to carry whiffs of sea-fog wherever he went. "Come, now, what is he to thee?"

For one moment Joan hesitated, while Tregenna in vain tried to disengage her arms, and whispered to her to go, to leave him. But she would pay no heed to his protests. In answer to Ben, her voice, after a moment's pause, rang out clearly—

"You will let him go, you say, if I tell you what he is to me? Well, then, you must let him go. For I tell you—he's—he's the man I love!"

For a moment there fell a silence upon the rough men. There was something in the tones of the maidenly voice which reached even the hearts of the smugglers, and awed them for an instant into quietness. The horses stamped, splashing up the mud; the wind whistled in the trees; but the men, for the space of a few seconds, were still as mice.

Then Tom, the most easily moved, the least hardened amongst them, leaned down from his horse, and touched Tregenna, not ungently, on the shoulder