When Father Beret appeared she cried
out to him--
"Oh, Father--Father Beret! help me! help me!"
When Farnsworth recovered from the breath-expelling shock of the
jab in his side and got himself once more in a vertical position,
both girl and priest were gone. He looked this way and that,
rapidly becoming sober, and beginning to wonder how the thing
could have happened so easily. His ribs felt as if they had been
hit with a heavy hammer.
"By Jove!" he muttered all to himself, "the old prayer-singing
heathen! By Jove!" And with this very brilliant and relevant
observation he rubbed his sore side and went his way to the fort.
CHAPTER XI
A SWORD AND A HORSE PISTOL
We hear much about the "days that tried men's souls"; but what
about the souls of women in those same days? Sitting in the
liberal geniality of the nineteenth century's sunset glow, we
insist upon having our grumble at the times and the manners of our
generation; but if we had to exchange places, periods and
experiences with the people who lived in America through the last
quarter of the eighteenth century, there would be good ground for
despairing ululations. And if our men could not bear it, if it
would try their souls too poignantly, let us imagine the effect
upon our women. No, let us not imagine it; but rather let us give
full credit to the heroic souls of the mothers and the maidens who
did actually bear up in the center of that terrible struggle and
unflinchingly help win for us not only freedom, but the vast
empire which at this moment is at once the master of the world and
the model toward which all the nations of the earth are slowly but
surely tending.
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