"I don't care, even if I bleed to death," I protested vehemently but most miserably. "Madam, you must," was the stern answer. "In the first place, although I am loath to allude to it in your present condition, really you are now a prisoner in my custody. You have halted the King's messenger, robbed the King's post on the King's Highway. The act is felony; nay, more, 'tis treason. The punishment I pointed out to you a few moments since. I must convey you hence, and I cannot march you away with that open wound." "Let me die here then!" I wailed, not realising that death was not imminent from that cause at any rate. "'Tis impossible," he said briefly, but with a firmness I could not stay. "And, in short, we have wasted too many words already." He stepped toward me and bent over me. In my desperation I struck feebly at him with my unwounded arm. "Madam," he said gently, catching me by the arm, "surely you see how futile is your resistance to me." "But you are wounded yourself." "A mere scratch," he replied. "Now, permit me." There was no help for it. I sank back on the grass and hid my face with my right hand. Never in all my life had I been so humiliated and ashamed. The tears welled through my fingers. I hated myself for weeping, but I had no power to check their flow. He whipped out a knife from some place, and, with skilful hands, slit the shirt across my shoulder, laying it bare. For all my blinding my eyes, I was acutely conscious of everything he did, and a little thrill of admiration at his delicacy pervaded me. A ruder man might have opened the shirt, but he took every care to conserve, so far as was possible, my outraged feelings by exposing me as little as possible. "Have you anything," he said at last, after he laid bare the wound and washed it with water, which he brought from the brook in his hands; "have you any bit of linen on your person with which to bind it up?" "Naught," said I. "If you only had a linen petticoat," he blurted out. "Ay," was my answer. "If I had that I should not now be here wounded, helpless, and at your mercy." He looked me over critically from head to foot. I could see betwixt my fingers. His glance, which was careless and indifferent enough, made my flesh fairly creep. Then he did a strange thing. He tore off his coat, and applied the knife to the sleeve of his own shirt. He cut it clear close to the shoulder, slit it in lengths, used the ruffles as a cloth to cleanse the wound, the edges of which he drew together, applied some plaster which he procured from a little box in his waistcoat, and then, with amazing skill and deftness, used the strips of his sleeve to bandage it all firmly and well. It is impossible to describe the relief afforded me by the process. When it was completed, I drew down my hand from my face and looked gratefully at him.