CHAPTER V.
“Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,
And I said in an underbreath,
All our life is mixed with death
And who knoweth which is best?”
Browning.
Howe had hardly finished speaking when the light of another torch flashed through the doorway, and with it appeared Barnes’s ugly face, with his red hair standing straight up, literally on end, as it always was, giving him the appearance of being in a chronic state of fright; but unless his own hideous nature frightened him, which I am afraid he had not grace enough to see as it really was, his appearance must have been merely a reflection of the contorted, misshapen soul within.
Eleanor Dare was one of a fine old English family who nearly all had served their country with their swords, on land or sea. She had all the elements of a soldier; was a brave, noble woman. Her figure, which was slight and graceful, to Barnes looked strangely tall and commanding as she rose and came to meet him, still holding her baby.
“What do you want? and who are you that you make yourself a ruler?”
Though Barnes boasted of fearing neither God nor man, there was something very cowardly in his nature: it made him shrink back now before the eyes of this brave woman, who dared to stand alone and accuse him of what he had done.