The men and women who crowded round him, staring and murmuring, were in number, perhaps, between thirty and forty; women with matted hair straggling and men unshorn, their garments, like his own, a patchwork of oddments and all of them uncouth and unclean. One woman, he noted, had a child at her half-naked breast; a dirty little nursling but a few months old, its downy pate crusted with scabs. He stared at it, wondering as to the manner of its birth—the mother returning his scrutiny with open-mouthed interest until shouldered aside without ceremony by a man whom Theodore recognized for the leader of his band of captors. When they reached the shadow of the clump of trees he had stridden ahead and vanished, presumably to report and seek orders from some higher authority; and now, at a word from him, Theodore was again jerked forward by his guards and, with the crowd breaking and trailing behind him, was led some fifty or sixty yards further to where, on the edge of the clump of trees, stood a building, a tumbledown cottage. The moon without and a fire within showed broken panes stuffed with moss and a thatched roof falling to decay; inside the atmosphere was foul and stale, and heavy with the heat of a blazing wood fire which alone gave light to the room.
By the fire, seated on a backless kitchen chair, sat a man, grey of head and bent of shoulder; but even in the firelight his eyes were keen and steely—large bright-blue eyes that shone under thick grey eyebrows. His face, with its bright, stubborn eyes and tight mouth, was—for all its dirt—the face of a man who gave orders; and it did not escape the prisoner that the others—the crowd that was thrusting and packing itself into the room—were one and all silent till he spoke.
“Come nearer,” he said—and on the word, Theodore was pushed close to him. “Let him go”—and Theodore was loosed. Someone, at a sign, lit a stick from the heap beside the fire and held it aloft; and for a moment, till it flared itself out, there was silence, while the old man peered at the stranger. With the sudden light the hustling and jostling ceased, and the crowd, like Theodore, waited on the old man’s words.
“Tell me,” at last came the order, “what you were doing here. Tell me everything”—and he lifted a dirty lean finger like a threat—“what you were doing on our land, where you came from, what you want?... and speak the truth or it will be the worse for you.”
Theodore told him; while the steel-blue eyes searched his face as well as they might in the semi-darkness and the half-seen crowd stood mute. He told of his life as it had been lived with Ada; of their complete separation from their fellows for the space of nearly two years; of the coming of the child and the consequent need of help for his wife—conscious, all the time, not only of the questioning, unshrinking eyes of his judge but of the other eyes that watched him suspiciously from the corners and shadows of the room. Two or three times he faltered in his telling, oppressed by the long, steady silence; for throughout there was no comment, no word of interest or encouragement—only once, when he paused in the hope of encouragement, the old man ordered “Go on!”... He went on, striving to steady his voice and pleading against he knew not what of hostility, suspicion and fear.
“... And so,” he ended uncertainly, “they found me. I wasn’t doing any harm.... I suppose they saw my fire?...”
From someone in the darkness behind him came a grunt that might indicate assent—then, again, there was silence that lasted.... The dumb, heavy threat of it was suddenly intolerable and Theodore broke it with vehemence.
“For God’s sake tell me what you’re going to do! It’s not much I ask and it’s not for myself I ask it. If you can’t help me yourselves there must be other people who can—tell me where I am and where I ought to go. My wife—she must have help.”
There was no actual response to his outburst, but some of the half-seen figures stirred and he heard a muttering in the shadow that he took for the voices of women.
“Tell me where I am,” he repeated, “and where I can go for help.”