"Now here's summat like a man!" said Prudy, and went out obediently to fetch them.
Until she returned there was dead silence in the bar-parlour. The men puffed uneasily at their pipes, not one of which was alight, and avoided the stranger's eye, which rested on each in turn with a sardonic humour.
Prudy lit the candles, one from the other, and after snuffing them with her fingers that they might burn steadily, arranged them in a row on the mantelshelf. Now above this shelf the chimney-piece was panelled to the height of some two and a half feet, and along the panel certain ballads that Prudy had purchased of the Sherborne messenger were stuck in a row with pins.
"Better take those ballads down, if you value them," the stranger remarked.
She turned round inquiringly.
"I'm going to shoot."
"Sakes alive—an' my panel, an' my best brass candlesticks!"
"Take them down."
She gave in, and unpinned the ballads.
"Now stand aside."