A Good Fight.
BY CHARLES READE.
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The bow was raised and the deadly arrow steadily drawn to its head, when at that moment an active figure leaped on Ghysbrecht from behind so swiftly, it was like a hawk swooping on a pigeon. A shirt went over the Burgomaster, and, in a turn of the hand, his head was muffled in it, and he was whirled from his seat and fell heavily upon the ground, where he lay groaning with terror; and Gerard jumped down after him.
“Hist, Martin! Martin!”
Martin and Margaret came out, the former open-mouthed, crying, “Now fly! fly! while they are all in the thicket; we are saved!”
At this crisis, when safety seemed at hand, as fate would have it, Margaret, who had borne up so bravely till now, began to succumb, partly from loss of blood.
“Oh, my beloved! fly!” she gasped. “Leave me, for I am faint!”
“No! no!” screamed Gerard. “Death together, or safety! Ah! the mule! mount her; you, and I’ll—”
In a moment Martin was on the mule, and Gerard raised the fainting girl in his arms and placed her on the saddle, and relieved Martin of his bow.
“Help! treason! murder! murder!” shrieked Ghysbrecht, rising on his hams.
“Silence, cur!” roared Gerard, and trode him down again by the throat as men crush an adder. “Now, have you got her firm? Then fly! for our lives!”
But even as the mule, urged suddenly by Martin’s heel, scattered the flints with his hind hoofs ere he got into a canter, and even as Gerard withdrew his foot from Ghysbrecht’s throat to run, Dierich Brower and his five men, who had come back for orders, and heard the Bur-