Now Elizabeth had not been idle. At the moment when Harry had stepped back from her and bade her go, she had run to the door of the east hall, and called Williams and Sam. While Peyton had been engaging Colden near the window, the steward and the negro had entered the parlor, and she had excitedly ordered them to Peyton's aid. Williams still had the duck-gun, Sam the pistol. Thus it occurred that, as Peyton half turned from Colden towards the two soldiers, these last-named saw Williams and Sam rush in between them and their prey. Before Williams could bring his duck-gun to bear, he was struck down senseless by one of the musket blows first intended for Peyton. Another blow, and from another musket, had been aimed at Sam's woolly head, but the negro had put up his left hand and caught the descending weapon, and at the same time had discharged his pistol at the weapon's holder. But Williams, in falling, had knocked against the darky, and so disturbed his aim, and the ball flew wide. The man who had brought down Williams now struck Sam a terrible blow with the musket-club, on the temple, and the negro dropped like a felled ox. During this brief passage, Peyton had returned to close quarters with Colden. The latter, who had lowered his pistol when his men had last approached Peyton, and who had resumed the contest of swords unequal in size and kind, now raised the pistol a second time. But it was caught by the hands of Elizabeth, who had run around to his left, and who now, suddenly endowed with the strength of a tigress, wrenched it from him as she had wrenched the broken sword earlier in the evening. She tried to discharge the pistol at one of the two soldiers, as they, relieved of the brief interposition of Williams and Sam, were again taking position to bring down their muskets on Peyton's head while he continued at sword-work with Colden. But the pistol snapped without going off, whereupon Elizabeth hurled it in the face of the man at whom she had aimed. The blow disconcerted him so that his musket fell wide of Peyton, who at the same instant, having seen from the corner of his eye how he was menaced, leaped backward from under the other descending musket. Then, taking advantage of the moment when the muskets were down, he ran to the music seat before the spinet, and mounted upon it, thinking rightly that the infuriated major would follow him, and that he might the better execute a certain manoeuvre from the vantage of height. Colden indeed rushed after him, and thrust at him, Peyton sweeping the thrusts aside with pendulum-like swings of his own short weapon. His thought was to send the point that menaced him so astray that he might leap forward and cleave his enemy with a downward stroke before the Tory could recover his guard. But Colden pressed him so speedily that he was at last fain to step up from the music seat to the spinet, landing first on the keyboard, which sent out a frightened discord as he alighted on it. Finding the keys an