Micah Clarke by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — Read

The sergeant, who was a great raw-boned west-countryman, pushed the gate / open, and we were advancing up the winding pathway, when a stream of / yellow light flooded out from a suddenly opened door, and we saw a dark / squat figure dart through it into the inside of the house. At the same / moment there rose up a babel of sounds, followed by two pistol shots, / and a roaring, gasping hubbub, with clash of swords and storm of oaths. / At this sudden uproar we all three ran at our topmost speed up the / pathway and peered in through the open door, where we saw a scene such / as I shall never forget while this old memory of mine can conjure up any / picture of the past.

The room was large and lofty, with long rows of hams and salted meats / dangling from the smoke-browned rafters, as is usual in Somersetshire / farmhouses. A high black clock ticked in a corner, and a rude table, / with plates and dishes laid out as for a meal, stood in the centre. / Right in front of the door a great fire of wood faggots was blazing, and / before this, to our unutterable horror, there hung a man head downwards, / suspended by a rope which was knotted round his ankles, and which, / passing over a hook in a beam, had been made fast to a ring in the / floor. The struggles of this unhappy man had caused the rope to whirl / round, so that he was spinning in front of the blaze like a joint / of meat. Across the threshold lay a woman, the one whose cries had / attracted us, but her rigid face and twisted body showed that our / aid had come too late to save her from the fate which she had seen / impending. Close by her two swarthy dragoons in the glaring red coats of / the Royal army lay stretched across each other upon the floor, dark and / scowling even in death. In the centre of the room two other dragoons / were cutting and stabbing with their broad-swords at a thick, short, / heavy-shouldered man, clad in coarse brown kersey stuff, who sprang / about among the chairs and round the table with a long basket-hilted / rapier in his hand, parrying or dodging their blows with wonderful / adroitness, and every now and then putting in a thrust in return.