“Sir,” said she, “forgive me; it was not my fault; she had just said—­” Slap! came Mary’s hand on Jane’s mouth; and Jane was marched off, weeping bitterly.

The girls had started up toward East Cheap when they left Grouche’s, intending to go home by an upper route, and now they walked rapidly in that direction.  Brandon continued to follow them, notwithstanding what Mary had said, and she thanked him and her God ever after that he did.

They had been walking not more than five minutes, when, just as the girls turned a corner into a secluded little street, winding its way among the fish warehouses, four horsemen passed Brandon in evident pursuit of them.  Brandon hurried forward, but before he reached the corner heard screams of fright, and as he turned into the street distinctly saw that two of the men had dismounted and were trying to overtake the fleeing girls.  Fright lent wings to their feet, and their short skirts affording freedom to their limbs, they were giving the pursuers a warm little race, screaming at every step to the full limit of their voices.  How they did run and scream!  It was but a moment till Brandon came up with the pursuers, who, all unconscious that they in turn were pursued, did not expect an attack from the rear.  The men remaining on horseback shouted an alarm to their comrades, but so intent were the latter in their pursuit that they did not hear.  One of the men on foot fell dead, pierced through the back of the neck by Brandon’s sword, before either was aware of his presence.  The other turned, but was a corpse before he could cry out.  The girls had stopped a short distance ahead, exhausted by their flight.  Mary had stumbled and fallen, but had risen again, and both were now leaning against a wall, clinging to each other, a picture of abject terror.  Brandon ran to the girls, but by the time he reached them the two men on horseback were there also, hacking away at him from their saddles.  Brandon did his best to save himself from being cut to pieces and the girls from being trampled under foot by the prancing horses.  A narrow jutting of the wall, a foot or two in width, a sort of flying buttress, gave him a little advantage, and up into the slight shelter of the corner thus formed he thrust the girls, and with his back to them, faced his unequal foe with drawn sword.  Fortunately the position allowed only one horse to attack them.  Two men on foot would have been less in each other’s way and much more effective.  The men, however, stuck to their horses, and one of them pressed the attack, striking at Brandon most viciously.  It being dark, and the distance deceptive, the horseman’s sword at last struck the wall, a flash of sparks flying in its trail, and lucky it was, or this story would have ended here.  Thereupon Brandon thrust his sword into the horse’s throat, causing it to rear backward, plunging and lunging into the street, where it fell, holding its rider by the leg against the cobble-stones of a little gutter.