I call that a plucky thing, don't you ?" She nodded.
Hallam shrugged.

"He behaved badly to the sergeant, who said warmly: ''Tis a brave thing ye did, Private Ormond.' And 'Is it ?' said Ormond with a sneer.

'I thought we were paid for doing such things.' 'Och, ye sour-faced Sassenach!' said Sergeant Mulqueen, disgusted; and told me about the whole affair." Ailsa had clasped her hands in her lap.

The fingers were tightening till the delicate nails whitened.
But it was too late to speak of Berkley to Hallam now, too late to ask indulgence on the score of her friendship for a man who had mutilated it.

Yet, she could scarcely endure the strain, the overmastering desire to say something in Berkley's behalf--to make him better understood--to explain to Hallam, and have Hallam explain to his troop that Berkley was his own most reckless enemy, that there was good in him, kindness, a capacity for better things---- Thought halted; was it _that_ which, always latent within her bruised heart, stirred it eternally from its pain-weary repose--the belief, still existing, that there was something better in Berkley, that there did remain in him something nobler than he had ever displayed to her?
For in some women there is no end to the capacity for mercy--where they love.
Hallam, hungry to touch her, had risen and seated himself on the flat arm of the chair in which she was sitting.