Doctor Syn: A Smuggler Tale of Romney Marsh. Arthur Russell Thorndike

somehow through the schoolmaster's set teeth; the silver steel leapt from the pocket of his overcoat, and Sennacherib was savagely struck twice under the arm as he pointed at the riders. He gave one great cry and fell forward, while the schoolmaster, entirely gone to pieces, with quaking limbs and chattering teeth, stooped down and cleaned the knife by stabbing it swiftly up to the hilt in a clump of short grass that grew in the soil by the roadside.

      ​The sudden horror of the thing was too much even for the callous Jerk, for his senses failed him and he slid back into the dyke among the rushes, and when he came to himself the first shreds of dawn were rising over Romney Marsh.