'Oh, this is terrible--terrible!' I cried. Putting my head out of my litter, I called to the ruffians to cease their cruelty. 'It is murder,' I said; 'it is nothing but murder! "Thou shalt do no murder."' But I might as well have spoken to the wind, which was beginning to rise in fitful gusts. The mob--for by this time the crowd had become a howling mob--was in no mood to be stayed from proceeding to extremities. A shower of mud and stones was flung at my litter and its attendants, one of the men-servants receiving a blow upon the shoulder, which might have put it out of joint, being most violent. 'Wait till we have drowned the witches, then we will come for you!' shouted Sir Claudius cruelly. 'Ay, ay, sir!' chorused many voices. This was alarming. My servants put their heads together, muttering their fears. I overheard them saying that they had seen the witch looking hard at me as she begged for mercy, and that I might be doomed, and what could three men and a woman do against more than a hundred ruffians? 'Mistress,' said old Timothy to me at length. 'We can do nothing against so many, and unfortunately we have already incurred their anger. Far better would it be, therefore, for us to turn and flee whilst they are occupied in drowning the witches.' 'Flee! Do you mean that?' exclaimed I. 'Yes. Yes, mistress dear. And quickly--quickly! It is our only chance.' And Timothy looked affrightedly at the angry faces of the mob. 'Nay. But that is cowardly!' I cried, 'to run away and think only of our own skins when the weak and old are being murdered!' 'We shall be murdered ourselves in a few more minutes if we stay here,' muttered the old man. 'Child,' he said, forgetting my new dignity, which indeed profited me nothing just then, 'it is to save our lives--_yours_, the most precious of all. How could I face Sir Henry again if you were killed?' And his voice shook. 'Killed! Killed? Are they threatening that? Oh, but, Timothy, we have never done them any harm.' 'Ay, but you have!' cried the loud, domineering voice of Sir Claudius, as he thrust himself forward to get between Timothy and me. 'You have tried to stop our sport!' 'Sport!' cried I, with the most mighty contempt I ever felt in all my life. 'Sport! Call you it sport to torture and kill poor feeble old women?' Angered by my words, the miscreant was about to lay hold of me with his great hands, when the lacquey Joseph gave him a blow of the fist which sent him staggering into the midst of his men. Alas, that was, as it were, a signal for hostilities to commence. Men and boys rushed on us from all sides. My men-servants were seized by overpowering numbers and hurled to the ground, and I myself was lifted bodily out of the litter and set on a bank by the roadside, so that all might see me.