"Curse you!" he cried, as he held the fagot upraised and rushed upon Dorothy.

John, with his arms full of fagots, could not avert the blow which certainly would have killed the girl, but he could take it.

He sprang between Dorothy and her father, the fagot fell upon his head, and he sank to the floor.

In his fall John's wig dropped off, and when the blood began to flow from the wound Dorothy kneeled beside his prostrate form.

She snatched the great bush of false beard from his face and fell to kissing his lips and his hands in a paroxysm of passionate love and grief.