d her to the waist, and then for decency--_their_
decency!--had thrown a jacket of coarse sacking over her, lacing it
loosely in front with pack-thread. But, because their work required it,
this garment had been gathered up into a rope at the neck, whence it
dangled in folds over her young breast.

She walked with wide eyes, uttering no sound. She alone of that crowd
uttered no sound. A brute with a bandaged jaw walked close behind her.
Oliver Vyell saw his forearm swing up--saw the scourge whirl in his
fist--met the girl's eyes. . . . She, meeting his, let escape the
first and last cry she uttered that day. He could have sworn that
her face was scarlet; but no, he was wrong; while he looked he saw
his mistake-she was white as death. Then with that one pitiful cry
she sank among the close-pressing crowd; but her hands, by the cord's
constraint, still lifted themselves as might a drowning swimmer's;
and the grey horse--the one other innocent creature in that
procession--plodded forward, dragging her now senseless body at the
cart's tail.

"You swine!"

It does a man good sometimes to get in his blow. It did Oliver Vyell
good, riding in, to slash twice crosswise on the brute's bandaged face;
to feel the whalebone bite and then, as he swung out of saddle, to ram
fist and whip-butt together on the ugly mouth, driving in its
fore-teeth.

"Stop the horse, some one!" he commanded, as the Beadle reeled back.
"She has fainted." He added, "The first man that interferes, I shoot."

The crowd growled. He turned on the nearest mutterer--"Your knife!"
The fellow handed it; so promptly, he might have been holding it ready
to proffer. The Collector stooped and cut the thongs. This done, he
stood up and saw the Beadle advancing again, snarling through the
bloody gap in his mouth.

"You had best take that man away," said the Collector quietly, pulling
out his small pistol. "If you don't, I am going to kill him."
They heard and saw that he meant it. He added in the same tone,
"I am going to take all responsibility for this. Will you make way,
please?"

His first intention was to lift the body lying unconscious in the
roadway, carry it to the coach and drive out of Port Nassau with it,
defying the law to interfere. For the moment he "saw red," as we say
nowadays, and was quite capable of shooting down, or bidding his
servants shoot down, any man who offered to hinder. It is even possible
that had he acted straightwa