"By George! boys, what a pretty wench! Keep back, you d----d rascals!"
(for the men had dismounted and were pressing behind him) "keep back, I
say, you drunken ----! Let rank have precedence in love as in other
things! Your turn may come afterward! Ho! pretty mistress, has your
larder the material to supply my men with a meal?"

Edith glanced around for her attendants. Jenny lay upon the hall floor,
fallen forward upon her face, in a deep swoon. Oliver stood out upon the
lawn, his teeth chattering, and his knees knocking together with terror,
yet faintly meditating a desperate onslaught to the rescue with his
wooden rake.

"No matter! for first of all we must have a taste of those dainty lips;
stand back, bl--t you," he vociferated with a volley of appalling oaths,
that sent the disorderly men, who were again crowding behind him, back
into the rear; "we would be alone, d---- you; do you hear?"

The drunken soldiers fell back, and he advanced toward Edith, who stood
calm in desperate resolution. She raised her hand to supplicate or wave
him off, he did not care which--her other hand, hanging down by her
side, grasped the pistol, which she concealed in the folds of her dress.

"Hear me," she said, "one moment, I beseech you!"

The miscreant paused.

"Proceed, my beauty! Only don't let the grace before meat be too long."

"I am a soldier's child," said Edith; her sweet, clear voice slightly
quavering like the strings of a lute over which the wind has passed; "I