"I would like to give you a thump on the head, you dirty dog!" said Patsy, breathing fiercely against the corner of the window-pane, and his use of the adjective was singular as showing in what strange ways extremes can meet.
This was the man to whom he had sold the gear of his companions: an indelicate business indeed, and one which the cleanliness of the purchaser assisted him to rectify, and it was in this room that the barter had been conducted. By craning his neck a little he could see an oaken settle, and upon this his sacks were lying with their mouths open and the gleaming cloths flooding at the entry.
While he stared, the man removed his fingers from his eyes and put them in his pocket, then he arose very slowly and paced thoughtfully towards the window.
Mac Cann immediately ducked beneath the window-ledge. He heard the window opened and knew the man was leaning his elbows on the sill while he stared into the darkness.
"Begor!" said Patsy to himself, and he flattened his body against the wall.
After a time, which felt longer than it could have been, he heard the man moving away, and he then popped up and again peeped through the window.
The man had opened the door of the room which faced the window and was standing in the entry. Now his hands were clasped behind his back, his head was sunken forward, and he seemed to be looking at his feet, which is the habit of many men when they think, for when the eyes touch the feet a circuit is formed and one's entire body is able to think at ease.
Suddenly the man stepped into a black corridor and he disappeared. Mac Cann heard about ten steps ringing from a solid flooring, then he heard a door open and shut, then he heard nothing but the shifting and rubbing of his own clothes and the sound his own nose made when he breathed outwards: there was a leathern belt about his middle, and from the noise which it made one would have fancied that it was woven of thunders—there was a great silence; the lighted room was both inviting and terrifying, for it was even more silent than the world outside; the steady globes stared at the window like the eyes of a mad fish, and one could imagine that the room had pricked up invisible ears and was listening towards the window, and one could imagine also that the room would squeak and wail if any person were to come through anywhere but a door and stand in it.
Mac Cann did not imagine any of these things. He spat on his hands, and in the twinkling of an eye he was inside the window. In three long and hasty paces he placed a hand on each of the sacks, and just as he gripped them he heard a door opening, and he heard the footsteps ringing again on a solid flooring.
"I'm in," said he, viciously, "and I won't go out."