But so anxious was Mrs. Orban to keep the servants that she disregarded Robertson's opinion, and the reward was duly offered. The engineer had one proposal to make, which was accepted. With Mrs. Orban's leave, he said, he, with his wife and two little children, would come up the hill and sleep in the house until Mr. Orban's return. There would be safety in numbers; and if the night visitor came again, some one to deal with him better than by screaming at him.
In spite of the fuller house, and the fact that Robertson's eight-year-old boy was sleeping in Peter's bed that night, Eustace did not feel particularly happy in the hours of darkness before him, after the party had broken up and said good-night.
The door between his mother's room and his own was left open, by way of companionship for them both, but the boy was so overtired as to be restless and unable to go to sleep. To his excited fancy there were unusual sounds about. The creaking of unwarping boards, the soughing of the night breeze round the house, even Sandy Robertson turning round in his bed, with an impatient but sleepy flump at the heat, were noises that set his hair on end and made him feel cold and damp all over again and again. Once or twice he stole from his bed to peer into his mother's room, but she always seemed asleep; or he would look stealthily out of the window, as if he could possibly have seen anything in the dark.
Robertson, with his wife and baby, was in Nesta's room at the other side of the house. It occurred to Eustace that if anything did happen—anything needing immediate action—Robertson was very far away and ungetatable. The boy sat up in bed hugging his knees, making feverish plans as to what he should do supposing the night visitor came again and he should see him.
Unknown to his mother, Eustace had taken the revolver he had been entrusted with the night before to bed with him. He meant to sleep with it under his pillow, but every time he got up to make his investigations he took it, gripped tightly in his hand ready for immediate use.
When the first gray light stole into the room at last, Eustace began to feel drowsy. Almost against his will he lay back on his pillow and fell asleep. He had determined to watch the night through, but a great heaviness overpowered him, and he lay like a log.
It seemed to him he had hardly closed his eyes—indeed, it cannot have been much later, for there was but little difference in the light—when a resounding pistol report rang through the silent house. Eustace awoke with an instant consciousness of having slept on his self-imposed sentry work. He felt queer and oddly shaken as, with a cry of dismay, he sprang out of bed and rushed into his mother's room.
"Oh, what is it?" exclaimed Mrs. Orban, frightened out of her wits by the noise.
She stared at Eustace, who stood, revolver in hand, gazing blankly round the room.
"I don't know," he began, stopped abruptly, and added in a choked voice, "Oh, look! look!"