She glanced at the forest, but it was only a blur before her.
The slim, scarlet-clad figure led on.

Lucy glanced over her shoulder, and she saw the women following her in a double file, grave and resolute.

She did not look back again, but marched on straight toward the spring.

She began to feel now what she was doing, that she was marching into the cannon's mouth, as truly as any soldier that ever led a forlorn hope against a battery.

She knew that hundreds of keen eyes there in the forest before her were watching her every step, and that behind her fathers and brothers and husbands were waiting, with an anxiety that none of them had ever known before.
She expected every moment to hear the sharp whiplike crack of the rifle, but there was no sound.