" (Rat-tat-tat.) "Did you
really think--(rat-tat)--two men--(rat-tat-tat)--were to be beaten
by one woman?"
The prisoner thus secured, he drew aside with justifiable pride to admire
his work. This action enabled him to see the side of the cottage he had
secured so cleverly in front and behind, and there was Grace Hope coming
down from her bedroom window; she had tied two crimson curtains together
by a useful knot, which is called at sea a fisherman's bend, fastened one
end to the bed or something, and she was coming down this extemporized
rope, hand over hand alternately, with as much ease and grace as if she
were walking down marble steps. Monckton flung his arm and body wildly
over the paling and grabbed her with his finger ends, she gave a spang
with her heels against the wall, and took a bold leap away from him into
a tulip-bed ten feet distant at least: he yelled to Bartley, "To the
garden;" and not losing a moment, flung his leg over the paling to catch
her, with Bartley's help, in this new trap. Mary dashed off without a
moment's hesitation at the quick-set hedge; she did not run up to it and
hesitate like a woman, for it was not to be wriggled through; she went at
it with the momentum and impetus of a race-horse, and through it as if it
was made of blotting-paper, leaving a wonderfully small hole, but some
shreds of her dress, and across the meadow at a pace that neither
Bartley nor Monckton, men past their prime, could hope to rival even if
she had not got the start.
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