"What would you do?"
"I'd shoot him," and her voice was deadly calm.
Suddenly they heard picks behind the little altar, and sprang up in consternation. Szmul had found Ian's largest grain store.
"Let us go," she said. There was something in her voice the priest had never heard before.
They returned to the library. She shut and locked the door and without another word went to Ian's bedroom. Father Constantine followed, afraid of the look on her face. She took her boy's revolver from a table by the bed.
"What are you going to do?"
She looked him full in the face, white to the lips but her eyes blazing with the passion of protecting motherhood.
"Shoot him--before he gets Ian."
"But you're mad," cried the priest, vainly trying to wrest the weapon from her. "The troopers will avenge themselves on you and on Miss."
But she was in no mood to listen. She made sure the revolver was loaded and went to the door. Her chaplain managed to reach it first.