THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM
in the crowd and as MacDougall raised his whip a woman burst through.
"My God!" cried Nathaniel, "it's—"
He left the rest of the words unspoken. His veins leaped with fire. A single sweep of his powerful arms and he had forced himself through the innermost line of spectators. Within a dozen feet of him stood Strang's wife, her beautiful hair disheveled, her face deadly white, her bosom heaving as if she had been running. In a moment her eyes had taken in the situation—the man at the stake, the upraised lash—and Nathaniel. With a sobbing, breathless cry, she flung herself in front of MacDougall and threw her arms around the kneeling man, her hair covering him in a glistening veil. For an instant her eyes were raised to Nathaniel and he saw in them that same agonized appeal that had called to him through the king's window. The striking muscles of his arms tightened like steel. One of the guards sprang forward and caught the girl roughly by the arm
110
