II
A mattress, stuffed clumsily in the seaward window, half blocked it. In the dormer looking towards the Downs, two biscuit-boxes crammed with earth sat on the sill, forming a rough head-cover.
Behind these Knapp sprawled on his stomach. Beside him was a wooden porringer full of bullets, and a basin of black powder; in his hand a musket.
In a cobweb corner by a barrel, Blob crouched covetously; while beside the mattress-curtain sat the Parson in his shirt-sleeves, furbishing Polly, and pausing every now and then to spy out through the bulges.
As Kit clambered on to the floor, the Parson turned, his blue eyes merry, and curls a-ripple.
"Ah, Kit, my boy, how are you?"
"Alive and well, sir, thanks to you. And you, sir?"
"I!" laughed the Parson. "I'm another man." A bullet whizzed by. The Parson listened sentimentally. "That's the music!" raising his face with a rapt smile. "Always makes me think of angels' wings."
He seemed to have grown, body and soul. His eyes shone, his cheeks glowed; he was crisp as a rimy apple.
Kit felt the change.