There was a gasp of astonishment from the company.

Jonas Hapgood began to speak, but Madelon's soprano drowned out his thick bass.
"How dare you," she cried out, "swear to that lie?
Liar! You are a liar, Lot Gordon!" Then, before Lot could reply, David Hautville came forward with a mighty plunge, and grasped his daughter by the arm, and forced her to the door.
"Get ye out of this," growled David Hautville; but Madelon turned her face back in the doorway for one last word.

"Don't you know," she shrieked back to Lot Gordon, in her pitiless despair--"don't you know that I would rather have seen the inside of my prison-cell to-night and the gallows to-morrow than this, Lot Gordon ?" "Quit your talk!" shouted David Hautville; and she followed his fierce leading out of the house into the yard.
"Get ye into this sleigh," ordered her father; and she obeyed.
Suddenly the fire of passion and revolt seemed to die out in her; it was like a lull in a spiritual storm.

She rode home with her father, and neither spoke.

David Hautville now considered the matter as past any words of reasoning.