m, "are you going to allow a senseless, wounded man to be
murdered before your eyes? Oh, how could anybody ever mistake you for
a gentleman for an instant?" he added, with withering contempt; and
then turning his head toward the fierce soldiery, "Stop, stop, you
bloody assassins!" he cried.

"Silence, sir! He might as well die this way as on the gallows.
Besides, he struck the first blow, and he has killed one of his
majesty's loyal soldiers. The soldier only wanted to kiss the girl
anyway, and she will find, before she gets to camp, that kisses are
cheap."

"Oh, my God," groaned the father, "and they call this war!"

At this moment one of the soldiers lifted his bayonet to plunge it into
the prostrate form of the unconscious sailor. There was a blinding
flash of light in the room, and a quick, sharp report. The man's arm
dropped to his side, and he shrieked and groaned with pain. Katharine,
unnoticed in the confusion, had slipped to the side of the table, and
had quickly picked up one of the pistols which Johnson had laid upon it
after the silver had been taken away. Her ready decision and unerring
aim had saved her lover's life. She threw the smoking pistol she had
used with such effect down at her feet, and, seizing the other, she
stepped over to the side of her unconscious lover.

"I swear," she said, in a shrill, high-pitched voice which just escaped
a scream, and which trembled with the agitation of the moment, "by my
hope of heaven, if a single man of you lay hands on him, he shall have
this bullet also, you cowards!"

After a moment's hesitation, amid shouts of "Kill the girl!" the men
surged toward her. Chloe, her black maid, flung herself upon her
mistress' breast.

"Oh, honey, I let dem kill me fust."

"Well done, Kate! It's the true Wilton blood. Oh, if I had a free
arm, you villains!" cried the still struggling colonel.

"Seize the girl," Johnson commanded promptly, "and let us get out of
this."

The men made a rush toward the table where Katharine stood undaunted,
her face flushed with excitement, her mouth tense with resolution. She
cried,--

"Have a care, men! have a care!"

One life she could still command with her loaded pistol. Her hands did
not tremble. She waited to strike once more for love and country, but
it would be all over in a moment.

The colonel groaned in agony, "Kate, Kate!" but they were almost upon
her, when a new voice rose above the uproar,--

"Hold! A