MAKING READY
The kitchen was dim as a sick-room, and strangely hushed. No one spoke but the Parson and he in whispers, lecturing Knapp, undressing in the corner.
The gravity of the enterprise, its certain perils, the issues at stake, oppressed the room. Death was there already; as yet indeed only a ghost at each man's elbow, in a few moments maybe to become incarnate.
Kit felt it and sickened.
Perched upon the table, his back to the boarded window, he whetted his dirk upon his shoe, and wondered if those others, those men, Knapp most of all, felt as he did.
Privately he thanked heaven that the dusk hid his face.
Through chinks and splintered bullet-holes, the light stole in, making daggers across the darkness.
It splashed the walls, the great stone-flags, the black mouth of the cellar, and the dresser in the corner.
There sat Knapp, a grey ghost spotted here and there with light. The little rifleman was naked now, save for a pair of fighting drawers. A heap of clothes sprawled at his feet.
The little rifleman was like a child. Broken-hearted a minute back, now he was as a lion in leash.