The handkerchiefs tied around the face of the junior smothered the reply, and still the rabble yelled and talked. Through a crack between the logs I saw a bottle passed to the tall young fellow I have spoken of, and I saw him take it and fling it far into the bushes, as he said in a commanding voice: “Here, you fellers, I’ve seen enough of this. We came out here with these two city gents to arrest the man and gal. Now, what the devil are you doing, just standing around getting drunk and yellin’ like fools?--You, old man, they’ve got you and air going to take you to Buffalo, and the gal too, wherever she is. There’s another city chap out in the bush. Now go ’long peaceable-like both of you, and I’ll knock the senses out of any man what lays a hand to you. I will, or my name ain’t Sam Scott.” Up to this time The Man had not spoken, and I could not detect from the flare of the torches that the calm had left his beautiful face. As a lamb, dumb before the shearer, so opened he not his mouth. He turned and looked at Sam Scott and said, quietly, “Friend, we will go with you.” Then in a louder voice, which I knew was for me, “Do not fear--no harm can come to you. We will go.” I hesitated not a moment, but lowered the ladder, and in an instant I stood among the rabble as they crowded about me, with faces full of wicked curiosity, brutality and hate. CHAPTER XXI. PERSECUTION. “Oh, you didn’t know we was here or you wouldn’t have kep’ us waitin’, would you?”--“Now, ain’t she a slick un!--and in her bare feet too. Well, the walk through the grass will be good fer her corns.”--“Say, now less get her drunk. She’ll be awful funny when she’s full,” and they passed up a whisky-bottle toward me; and so the remarks flew as the crowd of thirty or more men kept pushing closer around, anxious to get a nearer view of me. “I say, miss, is that the latest style of wearing hair on Canal street?”--“Oh, you forgot your bustle!”--“You don’t feel as big as you generally do!”--“You won’t snub us now, will you, even if we do live at the Cross-roads?” Sam Scott took me by the arm. “Don’t be afraid, missis--I know them all. Let us go,” he said. I looked into the face of this tall young man, and saw the look of quiet determination as we moved out of the door. There are two kinds of composure--one which speaks of calm rest and peace, the other a calm that is so quiet it threatens. It is the hush we feel before the storm--the composure of the couchant leopard before he springs. This was the look on the face of this twenty years old stripling as he pushed me not ungently before him and motioned that The Man should walk by my side.