Explore "Captain Fly-By-Night" by Johnston McCulley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
As she spoke he had imagined a score of things she would ask him to do, but never this. He realised by her words and the tone of her low voice how the girl had been struck to the heart by the thought of a member of her family -- no matter of how distant a branch -- turning traitor and renegade.
There had been a quality of vehemence in her sentence that had struck him like a blow. Unconsciously he started, and unconsciously his heels swung back and his spurs dug into the flanks of his horse. The movement was mechanical; he had seemed to try to dodge her sentence as he would have touched his steed to dodge the blow of a mounted swordsman.