"Frank," said Mistress Goel, and my heart thrilled at the word and the tone. "Frank, promise that you will kill me rather than let me fall into their hands. I would ask for a pistol to do it myself, but you may have need of them. Promise me, by all that is most sacred to you."
"I promise you that you shall not be taken alive, by the most sacred of all things to me--my love for you."
The heat of the mill grew stifling. Snaky flames came through the cracks and crevices, and hissed upward.
"We must try for life," I said, and pulled away the sacks and the door.
The enemy awaited us. All at once, they turned the other way, and the head constable rode into view, followed by a posse of young men, some on horseback, some on foot. Then the crowd fled a dozen ways, and I carried my fainting lady into the midst of a group of cheering, laughing friends.
The task of answering the hundred and one questions of our rescuers fell upon Mistress Goel, for I could not speak distinctly, my cheek and lips being so swollen. Two of my friends hoisted me upon their shoulders, in spite of my growling resistance, while other two made "a chair" for her with their arms and sticks, and we were carried with shouting to the vicarage, terrifying the good folk there no little by the noise. When my aunt saw Mistress Goel's blood-stained face and my puffed cheek, she fell to laughing and crying in a breath, and cried out that I was the most reckless fellow in the world, and not to be trusted with the care of a lady. The doctor clasped his daughter to his breast, and then held her off to examine her hurt, and turned to glare at me fiercely, as if I had done the mischief. Oddly enough it was the vicar who called for sponge and water, bandages, plaister, and the like; recommended the doctor to lose no time in attending to our wounds; imposed silence on the dozen who were babbling all at once, and, in short, put us into order.
Luke told how he had followed us, being in some fear that we might be attacked, but he had been astonished by the number of the crowd, which had gathered so quickly, and appeared to be under the direction of a man, who was a stranger to him. He saw us take refuge in the old mill, and then thought it better to call a party to our aid than to come single-handed. Accordingly, he had set off to give the alarm to the young fellows who had worked with us on the day after the flood, and, by great good luck, found the chief constable of the wapentake at supper in one of the houses at which he called. The rest of the story may be understood without the tedium of further words by me. During Luke's recital, Doctor Goel had attended to his daughter's hurt, and now gave me his care. My cut in the shoulder he pronounced unimportant, but shook his head over the injury to my jaw. At present, he could do little but bind a wet rag about my face, and give me a wash for the mouth, with a caution to swallow none of it. Meanwhile, my friends, on Mistress Goel's report, were making me out to be a hero, and there I sat with a swelled face, rolling a liquid in my mouth which made me wince, and unable to say a word. It struck me as so queer a fix for a hero to be in that I laughed, spurting out some of the doctor's stuff, and gulping some of it down, but the coughing fit and the pain which followed effectually cured me of inclination to further laughter.