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Ruth walked to the door and threw it open, standing on the threshold and gazing out into the dull moonlight, across the vast sweep of plain from which came the low moaning of the night wind, laden with mystery. For a long time, as she stood there, pride fought a savage battle with duty. Her face was pallid, her lips tight-clenched, and shame unutterable gripped her.
The young man flung back his shoulders with a jerk, as though overcoming his own feelings, and approached the body with evident distaste. His hands, slender as a woman's, were tight-clenched, and his breath came and went in nervous spasms. For a moment he gazed, and then shook his head weakly. "It is not," he whispered with dry lips. "There is an old scar across the temple. Mr.
Once more they circled heedfully, for Beltane had grown more wary: thrice he sought a certain hold and thrice Black Roger foiled him, ere, sudden and grim, he leapt and closed; and breast to breast they strove fiercely, mighty arms straining and tight-clenched, writhing, swaying, reeling, in fast-locked, desperate grapple.
Perhaps the great white captain would not remember their bay. Perhaps, her breath came fast, perhaps the ship, unseen by anyone, would pass and Lord Harold remain behind content. With hands tight-clenched she watched the distant sail, fear growing in her eyes. Yet she knew that she would tell him. Nothing else was honorable. This, surely, he must decide for himself.
His stern features expressed inflexible resolution; his brows were puckered, and his lips compressed, with deep and settled purpose; and when he started at a noise and listened, it was not with the start of fear but hope, and catching up his sword as though the hour had come at last, he would clutch it in his tight-clenched hand, and listen with sparkling eyes and eager looks, until it died away.
And thus he espied a light that hovered hither and thither above the distant battle-field, a small light whose red flame flashed back from cloven casque and riven shield, where eyes glared unseeing and mouths gaped mute and dumb from a dark confusion whence mailed arms stiffly rose with hands tight-clenched that seemed to menace heaven, and rigid feet whose spurred heels yet gored the flanks of rigid, fallen chargers; to and fro and up and down this small flame leaped merrily, dancing from dead face to dead face but staying never, a fiendish fire that seemed to mock the horror of wounds and gibe at solemn death.
Ravenslee shivered suddenly and stopped to stare about him while his listless hands changed to tight-clenched fists. What was it? What was there about this dismal, silent place that seemed to leap at him all at once from the dimness, he knew not whence?
Roger was down gasping on his knees, Beltane's hand was tight-clenched upon the hilt of his sword, as out into the moonlight crept one, very bent and feeble, shrouded in a long grey cloak; a pitiful figure, that, leaning a hand upon the rock, slowly raised a drooping head. Then Beltane saw that this was the witch Jolette.
His boots were in strips before he thought of another pair; his clothes were ragged. He thought only of the Great Work. In the Present, which came to him with tight-clenched, iron fingers gripping the promise which he must rend from them with the strength of brain and brawn, there was only the Great Work.
"My very good sir," returned Bellew, shaking his head in gentle reproof, "really, you seem to forget that you are not addressing one of your grooms, or footmen, consequently you force me to remind you of the fact; furthermore, " "That is no answer!" said Mr. Cassilis, his gloved hands tight-clenched upon his hunting-crop, his whole attitude one of menace.
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