Bess of the Woods by Warwick Deeping

Jeffray stood gripping his pistols in the cottage room, driven by strange stress of circumstances to fight for a peasant girl against a crowd of cursing and sweating smugglers. He had never stood forward as a hero among his peers, those blue-eyed, plump-bellied worthies who preached or swore in the pulpit and at the dining-table. Slim, sensitive, yet strong now as a band of steel, he waited, watching the door heave and creak beneath the weight of Dan's great body. Bess, kneeling behind her chair, was plying the ramrod. Her eyes met Jeffray's for a moment, the gleam in them speaking for her woman's heart.

Men were massing outside the cottage, brown handed, brown faced, redolent of liquor and of the sweat of action. Bess heard old Isaac's treble, warning the fellows to keep clear of the window, and calling for a beam to break down the door. Jeffray saw the hole that he had blown in the lock with the musket darkened by the shadow of a man's head. The glittering white of an eyeball showed through the rent. He stepped aside from the stretch of floor that the hole commanded, knowing that a pistol's snout might take the place of a man's eye. Nor was he too swift in the conclusion. There was a brisk report, a belching of smoke into the room, and a ball flattened itself against the opposite wall. Bess's eyes flashed round to see whether Jeffray were hurt or no. He shook his head at her, smiled, and pointed to the window.