So fired was I at the sound of Delia’s voice, that ’twas with much ado I kept quiet behind the bush. Yet I had wit enough left to look to the priming of my pistol, and also to bid the Captain shout again. As he did so, a light shone out down the road, and round the corner came a man bearing a lantern. “Can’t be quicker, Captain,” he called: “the jade struggles so that Dick and Jeremy ha’ their hands full.” Sure enough, after him there came in view two stooping forms that bore my dear maid between them—one by the feet, the other by the shoulders. I ground my teeth to see it, for she writhed sorely. On they came, however, until not more than ten paces off; and then that traitor, Luke Settle, rose up behind our bush. “Set her here, boys,” said he, “and tie her pretty ankles.” “Well met, Captain!” said the fellow with the lantern—Reuben Gedges—stepping forward; “Give us your hand!” He was holding out his own, when I sprang up, set the pistol close to his chest, and fired. His scream mingled with the roar of it, and dropping the lantern, he threw up his hands and tumbled in a heap. At the same moment, out went the light, and the other rascals, dropping Delia, turn’d to run, crying, “Sold—sold!” But behind them came now a shout from Billy, and a crashing blow that almost severed Black Dick’s arm at the shoulder: and at the same instant I was on Master Toy’s collar, and had him down in the dust. Kneeling on his chest, with my sword point at his throat, I had leisure to glance at Billy, who in the dark, seem’d to be sitting on the head of his disabled victim. And then I felt a touch on my shoulder, and a dear face peer’d into mine. “Is it Jack—my sweet Jack?” “To be sure,” said I: “and if you but reach out your hand, I will kiss it, for all that I’m busy with this rogue.” “Nay, Jack, I’ll kiss thee on the cheek—so! Dear lad, I am so frighten’d, and yet could laugh for joy!” But now I caught the sound of galloping on the road above, and shouts, and then more galloping; and down came a troop of horsemen that were like to have ridden over us, had I not shouted lustily. “Who, in the fiend’s name is here?” shouted the foremost, pulling in his horse with a scramble. “Honest men and rebels together,” I answered; “but light the lantern that you will find handy by, and you shall know one from t’other.”