Then I was at his side. "Don't touch me!" he gasped, recovering himself and recoiling from the vision that seemed to have come between him and his persecutors. "Miss Carr, for heaven's sake!--away from here!" For answer she caught his hand in hers, and drew his befouled arm through her own. "Come," she said, as her eyes flashed with anger; "lean on me. They will not dare to treat a woman ill." "Antony," cried Hallett hoarsely. "Miss Carr--take her away!" "Lean on me," she cried proudly. "Antony, beat a way for us through these curs." I took Hallett's other arm, and as we stepped forward, Jem Smith uttered a loud "Yah!" but it seemed as if it was broken before it left his lips, and he went staggering back from a tremendous blow right in the teeth, delivered by Tom Girtley. Then there was an interlude, for some one else forced his way to the front. "Miss Carr! great heavens! what is all this?" he cried. "Give me your hand. This is no place for you. What does this outrage mean? Quick! let me help you. This is horrible." "Stand back, sir!" "You are excited," he cried. "You don't know me. I see now; there is your carriage. Stand away, you ruffians. How thankful I am that I was near! Take this man away. Is he drunk?" As he spoke, John Lister, with a look of supreme disgust, pushed poor fainting Hallett back, and tried to draw Miss Carr out of the crowd. "Coward! Villain! This is your work!" she cried in a low, strange voice; and as he tried to draw her away, she sharply thrust him from her. The crowd uttered a cry of excitement as they witnessed the act; and, stung almost to madness with rage and mortification, Lister turned upon me. But I again found a good man at my back, for, boiling with rage, Tom Girtley struck at him fiercely and kept him off, while in the midst of the noise, pushing, and hustling of the crowd, a confusion that seemed to me now as unreal as some dream, we got Hallett along towards the carriage, he, poor fellow, seeming ready to sink at every step, while the true-hearted woman at his side clung to him and passed one arm round him to help him. The coachman now saw that his mistress seemed to be in need of help, and he shortened the distance by forcing his horses onward through the gathering crowd. But the danger was past, for those who now thronged out from the buildings on either side were workpeople attracted by the noise, and they rapidly outnumbered John Lister's gang of scoundrels, got together by his lieutenant, Jem Smith, for the mortification of the man he hated, while his triumph had been that the woman they loved had come to his rival's help, glorified him, as it were, by her presence, and rained down scorn and contempt upon his own wretched head. As I said before, it seems now like some terrible dream, in which I found myself in Miss Carr's carriage, with her sister looking ghastly with fear beside me, and Hallett in the back seat, nearly unconscious, beside Miss Carr.