Of a sudden, however, the scene took on a more sinister expression. The man had caught the stick and twisted it out of the girl’s hand. Jeffray could distinguish his inflamed and passionate face even at a distance of fifty paces. In another instant the man’s arms were about the girl’s body, and she was writhing and struggling like a hound hugged to the hairy bosom of a bear. Richard, who had recognized the elf of the Queen’s Circle, pricked in his spurs, and went cantering down the ride. He rolled out of the saddle when close upon the pair, left his mare loose, and, drawing his sword, ran towards Dan Grimshaw and Miss Bess. The girl had one hand on the man’s throat, and was beating the other in his face. He had picked her up bodily and was holding her in mid-air when Richard’s shout startled his hairy ears. Black Dan dropped Bess upon the grass, and, being mad as any antlered stag baffled by a hunter, snatched up the girl’s stick and made at Richard with savage good-will. Jeffray’s pretty bodkin of a blade was smitten away out of his hand, and he himself was brought low with heavy cut across the crown. Black Dan, his face as like a flesh-eating ogre’s as any nursemaid might paint for the intimidation of the young, stood over Richard as though tempted to strike again. He was balked in his charitable purpose, however, by finding Bess fronting him with a pistol in either hand. She had caught Jeffray’s mare, and plucked the pistols from the holsters, their master having forgotten the good barkers in the full flux of chivalry. “Touch him, Dan, and I’ll shoot you, you devil.” In truth, a fine stage effect, Belphœbe rescuing Timias from the wrath of the savage of the woods! VII Dan’s fury cooled out of him as he looked at the white face half hidden by a grass tussock, and caught a glint of the polished barrels of Bess’s pistols. Jeffray’s beaver had fallen off, and he lay with the blood soaking from a scalp-wound into his hair. Dan drew back, swinging his stick, and staring sheepishly at the blood trickling across Jeffray’s forehead. Bess, seeing that Dan had come to his senses, put back one of the pistols into the holster, but kept the other in her hand. She ordered Dan back, and kneeling down on the wet grass turned Jeffray’s head gently into her lap. A look of wonder flashed into her eyes as she considered his face, for this was the man St. Agnes had showed her in her dream. He even wore black, with white ruffles at his wrists, and his blood had been spilled for her in saving her from Dan’s savagery.