He had a sabre cut across his brow, and the
blood flowed in a warm, trickling stream down his face. But of
this he was unconscious; all that he wanted, all that he was
striving for with agonising heart-beats and cracking sinews, was
to get to his friend, who was lying in there unconscious,
abandoned--dead, perhaps.
"Curse you," struck Heron's voice close to his ear. "Cannot some
of you stop this raving maniac?"
Then it was that the heavy blow on his head caused him a sensation
of sickness, and he fell on his knees, still gripping the ironwork.
Stronger hands than his were forcing him to loosen his hold; blows
that hurt terribly rained on his numbed fingers; he felt himself
dragged away, carried like an inert mass further and further from
that gate which he would have given his lifeblood to force open.
And Marguerite heard all this from the inside of the coach where
she was imprisoned as effectually as was Percy's unconscious body
inside that dark chapel. She could hear the noise and scramble,
and Heron's hoarse commands, the swift sabre strokes as they cut
through the air.
Already a trooper had clapped irons on her wrists, two others held
the carriage doors. Now Armand was lifted back into the coach,
and she could not even help to make him comfortable, though as he
was lifted in she heard him feebly moaning.
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