"You cowardly murderer!"
"Murderer? Not-a yet. But I meant to be."
Ravelli turned off by the cross-path, and Gerald passed on.
CHAPTER III.
The first man to go to work at Overlook in the morning was Jim Wilson, because he had to rouse the fire under a boiler early enough to provide steam for a score of rock drills. The night watchman awakened him at daybreak, according to custom, and then got into a bunk as the other got out of one.
"Everything all right?" Jim asked.
"I guess so," the other replied. "But I hain't seen your boiler sence before midnight. Eph was disturbin' Mary Mite, and so I hung 'round her cabin pretty much the last half of the night."
Jim went to his post at the boiler, and at an unaccustomed pace, from the point where he first saw and heard steam hissing upward from the safety valve. On quitting the night previous, he had banked the fire as usual, and this morning he should have found it burning so slowly that an hour of raking, replenishing, and open draughts would no more than start the machinery at seven o'clock. Going nearer he found that open dampers and a fresh supply of coal had set the furnace raging.
What was that which protruded from the open door, and so nearly filled the aperture that the draught was not impaired?