--she lunged with all the force of her strong young arm
at his heart.

With such violence that the hilt struck his breast and hurled him
bodily against the doorpost; while the blade broke off, shivered by
contact with the hard wood.

Uncle Ulick uttered a cry of horror. "My G----d!" he exclaimed, "you
have killed him!"

"His blood----"

She stopped on the word. For instead of falling Colonel John was
regaining his balance. "Flavia!" he cried--the blade had passed through
his coat, missing his breast by a bare half-inch. "Flavia, hold!
Listen! Listen a moment!"

But in a frenzy of rage, as soon as she saw that her blow had failed,
she struck at him with the hilt and the ragged blade that
remained--struck at his face, struck at his breast, with cries of fury
almost animal. "Wretch! wretch!" she cried--"die! If they are cowards,
I am not! Die!"

The scene was atrocious, and Uncle Ulick, staring open-mouthed, gave no
help. But Colonel Sullivan mastered her wrists, though not until he had
sustained a long bleeding cut on the jaw. Even then, though fettered,
and though he had forced her to drop the weapon, she struggled
desperately with him--as she had struggled when he carried her through
the mist. "Kill him! kill him!" she shrieked. "Help! help!"

The men would have killed him twice and thrice if The McMurrough, with
voice and blade and frantic imprecations and the interposition of his
own body, had not kept the O'Beirnes and the others at bay--explaining,
deprecating, praying, cursing, all in a breath. Twice a blow was struck
at the Colonel through the doorway, but one fell short and the other
James McMurrough parried. For a moment the peril was of the greatest:
the girl's cries, the sight of her struggling in Colonel John's grip,
wrought the men almost beyond James's holding. Then the strength went
out of her suddenly, she ceased to fight, and but for Colonel
Sullivan's grasp she would have fallen her length on the floor. He knew
that she was harmless then, and he thrust her into the nearest chair.
He kicked the broken sword under the table, staunched the blood that
trickled fast from his cheek; last of all, he looked at the men who
were contending with James in the doorway.

"Gentlemen," he said, breathing a little quickly, but in no other way
betraying the strait through which he had passed, "I shall not run
away. I shall be here to answer you to-morrow, as fully as to-day. In
the meantime I beg to suggest"--