Page:Daskam Bacon--Whom the gods destroy.djvu/225

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THE MAID OF THE MILL

and stared once in her eyes. Scorn and rage and murder were in his.

"Joan forgot his own danger in terrified pity. He struggled a moment, but it was useless. His dreadful bonds still held. The man came to the bed, dragging the hound, and Joan shut his eyes, not to see the dark evil face. He would die in the dark, alone, unaided. Oh! to call once! To hear a human voice! But there was no sound but the panting of the great, eager dog.

"The man seemed not to see him. He seized the girl, and turning her toward the light that burned at the pane, he bound her to the bed-post with the silken sash. She writhed and bent and tried to grasp his feet; she pleaded with her eyes till their agony cut Joan like a knife, but the man tied her straight and fast. Then he walked to the pane and crouched down by it and held the dog's muzzle, and became like a stone image.

"And suddenly it flashed across Joan's mind, with a passion of fear to which all that had gone before was as nothing, that Darby was coming up that ladder to that light! Darby, whom he had

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