"Mercy, my dear!" Mrs. Russecks cried, umning to her husband. "Whatever is the matter?"
"Go to, don't I'll have thy whoring head along with his!"
He endeavored to push her aside in order to get at the cowering poet, but she clung to him like a vine upon an oak, so that he could only hobble across the parlor.
"Stay, Harry, thou'rt mistaken!" she pleaded. "What're thy suspicions, God smite me dead if there hath been aught 'twixt this man and me!"
" 'Tis I shall smite!" the miller cried. "Commissioner or no, there's guilt writ plain athwart his ugly face!"
"As Heav'n is my witness, sir!" Ebenezer pleaded, "Madame Russecks and I were merely conversing!" But however true the letter of his protest, his face indeed belied it. He leaped for safety as the miller swung.
"Hold still, dammee!"
The miller paused to fetch his wife so considerable a swat with the back of his free hand that she gave a cry and fell to the floor. "Now we'll see thy liquorous innards!"
Ebenezer strove to keep the parlor table between himself and dismemberment.
"Let him go!" Mrs. Russecks shrieked. " 'Tis the other one you must find, ere he swive Henrietta!"
These words undoubtedly saved the poet's life, for Harry Russecks had flung over the table with one hand and driven him into a corner. But the mention of Henrietta, whom he had apparently forgotten, drove the miller nearly mad with rage; he turned on his wife, and for an instant Ebenezer was certain she would suffer the fate he had temporarily been spared.
"He fetched her into the woods," Mrs. Russecks said quickly, "and vowed he'd murther her if Sir Benjamin or myself so much as blinked eye at him!"
Like a wounded boar at scent of his injurer, the miller gave a sort of squealing grunt and charged outdoors.
"Make haste to the mill!" Mrs. Russecks cried to Ebenezer. "Bid Henrietta slip into the woods where Harry and I can find her, and you and your friend hide yourselves in Mary's wagon!"
The poet jumped to follow her instructions, but upon stepping outside, just a few seconds behind the miller, they saw the plan foiled before their eyes. Mary Mungummory, leading the lost Aphrodite, had run puffing and panting into the dooryard just as the miller charged out again; at the same moment, though Ebenezer could not see them from the front steps of the house, either McEvoy or Henrietta or both must have peered out from the mill to see what the commotion was about, for although Russecks was headed in the general direction of the woods, Mary, knowing nothing of the ruse, dropped Aphrodite's halter and ran as best she could toward the mill, calling "Go back! Here comes Sir Harry!" The miller wheeled about and lumbered after. A scream came from the mill and was answered by another from Mrs. Russecks, who ran a few steps as though to intercept her husband and then, stumbling or swooning, fell to the ground.
Ebenezer found himself running also, but with no idea at all what to do. He was still somewhat closer to the mill door than was Russecks and could doubtless have headed him off, but with no weapons of his own such a course would have been suicidal as well as ineffective. Yet neither could he simply stand by or look to his own escape while McEvoy, and perhaps the girl too, were done to death. Therefore he simply trotted without object into the yard, and when Russecks charged past without a glance, he turned and followed a safe ten yards behind.
Mary, meanwhile, had disappeared, but as soon as Russecks entered the mill (whence issued at once fresh screams from Henrietta) she trundled from around the corner, most distraught.
"God's blood, Mister Cooke, I did all a body could, but the farther we went, the more jealous he grew, till he swore he'd go no farther for the King himself! Nay, don't go in, sir; 'tis your life! Ah, Christ, yonder lies Roxie, done to death!"
She hurried off to the fallen Mrs. Russecks, whom she supposed to have been run through and Ebenezer, ignoring her advice, proceeded quickly into the mill. Already Russecks had started up the ladder that led to the catwalk and grain hopper; McEvoy was scrambling from the upper rungs of the second ladder, which led from the hopper to the loft; and near the edge of the loft itself stood pretty Henrietta, incriminated by the petticoats in which she stood and screamed.
"Ha! Ye'll run no farther!" the miller shouted from the platform, and Ebenezer realized that the lovers were trapped.
"Throw down the ladder!" he cried to McEvoy. The Irishman heard him and leaped to follow his counsel just as Russecks began to climb. But although the ladder was neither nailed nor tied in place, its stringers had been wedged between two protruding floor-joists of the loft, too tightly for McEvoy to free them by hand from his position. The miller climbed with difficulty to the second rung, the third, and the fourth, holding the cutlass in his hand and watching his quarry's struggle.
Now on the platform himself, Ebenezer watched with fainting heart. "Throw something down, John! Knock him off!"
McEvoy looked wildly about the loft for a missile and came up with nothing more formidable than a piece of cypress studding, perhaps three feet long and three inches on a side. For a moment he stood poised to hurl it; Russecks halted his climb and waited to dodge the blow, growling and jeering. Then, thinking better of it, McEvoy fitted one end of the stud behind the topmost rung of the ladder, and using the edge of the loft for a fulcrum, pulled back upon the other with all his weight. There was a loud crack; Ebenezer caught his breath: but apparently neither rung nor lever had broken, for McEvoy placed a foot against each stringer-top for mechanical advantage and heaved back again. Another crack: Ebenezer saw the ladder move out an inch or so, and the miller, uncertain whether to rush for the top or climb down before he fell, gripped the sides more tightly and cursed. The new angle of the lever afforded McEvoy less of a purchase and tended to lift as well as push the ladder, but Henrietta sprang to his assistance, and on the third try their effort succeeded in freeing the ladder from the joists. Its slight inclination kept it from falling backwards at once, and in the moment required for McEvoy to pull it over sideways, the miller jumped safely to the platform.
McEvoy laughed. "Love conquers all, Your Majesty! Murther us now, sir!"
Russecks picked himself up and shook his sword at the loft. "Well done, dammee; what keeps me down will keep ye up, and we shall see how soon ye choke on your damned love! There's many a keep taken by siege that hath withstood the worst assaults!"
Ebenezer had observed all this from the far end of the same platform on which the miller now stood. That his own position was far from safe did not occur to him; his whole attention was directed to the lovers, and when he recalled that McEvoy knew nothing of Mrs. Russecks's abduction-story, his sudden vision of a stratagem bunded him to more prudent considerations.
"Prithee, sir!" he cried to the miller, in a voice loud enough for them to hear and be advised by. "Don't tempt his anger, I beg you, while he hath your daughter in his clutches! Howe'er he hath wronged you, 'tis better he go free than that he murther Henrietta before your eyes, or work lewd tortures on her as desperate men are wont — "
He got no farther; whether Russecks had heard his earlier suggestions to McEvoy or now noticed his presence for the first time, he was clearly of the same mind no longer about the poet's innocence. He turned on him, brandishing the cutlass, and said, "Who gives a man horns must beware of a goring!"
Ebenezer lost no time fleeing down the nearby ladder to the ground and racing for the front doorway, where he saw Mary and the miller's wife anxiously looking on. But however distraught, Mrs. Russecks still had her wits about her; before Ebenezer reached the door she ran in towards the fallen ladder.