as I expected, neither could I espy a light. And I
seemed to hear a faint low sound, like the moaning of the snow-wind.
Then I knocked again more loudly, with a knocking at my heart: and
receiving no answer, set all my power at once against the door. In a
moment it flew inwards, and I glided along the passage with my feet
still slippery. There in Lorna's room I saw, by the moonlight flowing
in, a sight which drove me beyond sense.

Lorna was behind a chair, crouching in the corner, with her hands up,
and a crucifix, or something that looked like it. In the middle of the
room lay Gwenny Carfax, stupid, yet with one hand clutching the ankle of
a struggling man. Another man stood above my Lorna, trying to draw the
chair away. In a moment I had him round the waist, and he went out of
the window with a mighty crash of glass; luckily for him that window had
no bars like some of them. Then I took the other man by the neck; and he
could not plead for mercy. I bore him out of the house as lightly as I
would bear a baby, yet squeezing his throat a little more than I fain
would do to an infant. By the bright moonlight I saw that I carried
Marwood de Whichehalse. For his father's sake I spared him, and because
he had been my schoolfellow; but with every muscle of my body strung
with indignation, I cast him, like a skittle, from me into a snowdrift,
which closed over him. Then I looked for the other fellow, tossed
through Lorna's window, and found him lying stunned and bleeding,
neither able to groan yet. Charleworth Doone, if his gushing blood did
not much mislead me.

It was no time to linger now; I fastened my shoes in a moment, and
caught up my own darling with her head upon my shoulder, where she
whispered faintly; and telling Gwenny to follow me, or else I would come
back for her, if she could not walk the snow, I ran the whole distance
to my sledd, caring not who might follow me. Then by the time I had set
up Lorna, beautiful and smiling, with the seal-skin cloak all over her,
sturdy Gwenny came along, having trudged in the track of my snow-shoes,
although with two bags on her back. I set her in beside her mistress,
to support her, and keep warm; and then with one look back at the glen,
which had been so long my home of heart, I hung behind the sledd, and
launched it down the steep and dangerous way.

Though the cliffs were black above us, and the road unseen in front, and
a great white grave of snow might at a single word