But he refused, partly
because he did not care about being paired off with Miss Macroyd so
conspicuously, and partly because he wished to help the fight along.
Attacks were made and repelled, and there were feats of individual and
collective daring on the side of the defenders which were none the less
daring because the assailants stopped to cheer them, and to disable
themselves by laughing at the fury of the foe. A detachment of the young
men at last stormed the castle and so weakened its walls that they
toppled inward; then the defenders, to save themselves from being buried
under the avalanche, swarmed out into the open and made the entire force
of the enemy prisoners.
The men pretended that this was what might have been expected from the
beginning, but by this time the Berserker madness had possessed Miss
Macroyd, too; she left her throne of snow and came forward shouting that
it had been perfectly fair, and that the men had been really beaten, and
they had no right to pretend that they had given themselves up purposely.
The sex-partisanship, which is such a droll fact in women when there is
any question of their general opposition to men, possessed them all, and
they stood as, one girl for the reality of their triumph. This did not
prevent them from declaring that the men had behaved with outrageous
unfairness, and that the only one who fought with absolute sincerity from
first to last was Mr.
Pages:
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79