Neal, as he slipped silently from the room, was aware that Hannah meditated a vigorous attack upon her midnight visitors. She took the long kitchen poker in her hand, shook it with a grim smile, and thrust the end of it into the heart of the fire.
There was a knock at the door. Hannah, standing in a corner of the room, and hidden from any one looking in through the window, neither spoke nor stirred. The knocking was repeated, and again repeated. Hannah remained silent.
“Open the door,” shouted a voice from without, “open the door at once.”
Still there was no reply.
“We know you’re within, Hannah Macaulay, we saw the light before you put it out. Open to us, or we’ll batter in the door, and then it will be the worse for you.”
“And who may be you that come knocking and banging the door of a dacent house at this time o’ night, making a hullabaloo fit for to wake the dead; and it the blessed Sabbath too?”
“Sabbath be damned; it’s Thursday night.”
“Is it, then, is it? There’s them that wouldn’t know if it was Monday nor Tuesday, nor yet Wednesday, nor the blessed Sabbath day itself, and, what’s more, wouldn’t care if they did know. That just shows what like lads you are. Away home out o’ this to your beds, if so be that you have any beds to go to.”
In fact the men outside were perfectly right. The day was Thursday, though it neared Friday. The Sabbath was a long way off yet, as Hannah knew quite well.
“You doited old hag, open the door.”