Barbazon and Jowett lifted the motionless figure in their arms, and
carried it into a little room.
Then Osterhaut picked up the horseshoe tied with its gay blue ribbons,
now stained with blood, and put it in his pocket.
"For luck," he said.
CHAPTER XI
THE SENTENCE OF THE PATRIN
Fleda waked suddenly, but without motion; just a wide opening of the eyes
upon the darkness, and a swift beating of the heart, but not the movement
of a muscle. It was as though some inward monitor, some gnome of the
hidden life had whispered of danger to her slumbering spirit. The waking
was a complete emergence, a vigilant and searching attention.
There was something on her breast weighing it down, yet with a pressure
which was not weight alone, and maybe was not weight at all as weight is
understood. Instantly there flashed through her mind the primitive belief
that a cat will lie upon the breasts of children and suck their breath
away. Strange and even absurd as it was, it seemed to her that a cat was
pressing and pressing down upon her breast. There could be no mistaking
the feline presence. Now with a sudden energy of the body, she threw the
Thing from her, and heard it drop, with the softness of feline feet, on
the Indian rug upon the floor.
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