"This girl she come to the drawbridge and hollered--that's all I know!" said the sentry, disassociating himself from any trouble as completely as possible. Bob felt that under the circumstances it was very distinctly folly to be wise. "I don't know what she hollered, but Nosie he runs an' begins twisting her arm, and then the girl she begins to holler again!"
"I didn't mean to," said Prissy tremulously, "but he _was_ hurting so dreadfully."
"Come here, you!" shouted Nipper to the retiring Nosie. Whereupon that young gentleman, hearing the dreadful voice of his chief officer, and being at the time on the right side of the moat, did not pause to respond, but promptly took to his heels in the direction of the town.
"Run after him and bring him back, two of you fellows! Don't dare come back without him!" cried Nipper, and at his word two big boys detached themselves from the doorposts in which the guard was kept, and dashed after the deserter.
"Oh, don't hurt him--perhaps he didn't mean it!" cried the universally sympathetic Prissy. "He didn't hurt me much after all, and it is quite better now anyway."
Nipper Donnan could, as we know, be as cruel as anybody, but he liked to keep both the theory and practice of terror in his own hands. Besides, some possible far-off fragrance from another life stirred in him when he saw the slim girlish figure of Prissy Smith, clad all in white with a large sun-bonnet edged with pale green, standing on the bank and appealing to him with eyes different from any he had ever seen. He wanted, he knew not why, to kick Nosie Cuthbertson--kick him much harder than he had done before he saw whom he was tormenting. He had never particularly noticed any one's eyes before. He had thought vaguely that every one had the same kind of eyes.
[Illustration: "THE RETURN OF THE TWO SWIFT FOOTMEN."]
"Well, what do you want?" he said gruffly. For with Nipper and his class emotion or shamefacedness of any kind always in the first instance produces additional dourness.
Prissy smiled upon him--a glad, confident smile. She was the daughter of one war chief, the sister of another, and she knew that it is always best and simplest to treat only with principals.
"You know that I didn't come to spy or find out anything, don't you?" she said; "only I was so sorry to think you were fighting with each other, when the Bible tells us to love one another. Why can't we all be nice together? I'm sure Hugh John would if you would----"