I did not listen to an objection that she was framing, but slipped hastily through the trees. As the ugly mass of the house took a more certain shape before me, I felt my pulse beat more rapidly, and not entirely through elation. Even today when I look at a place that men have built and then abandoned, something of the same feeling comes over me, but not as strongly as it did that evening. It was another matter that made me hesitate. From the shadow of the doorway I heard a sound which was too much like the raising of a pistol hammer not to make me remember that a sword was all I carried.
"There is no need to cock that pistol," I said, in a tone which I hoped sounded more confident than my state of mind. I halted, but there was no answer and no further sound.
"I said," I repeated, raising my voice, "there is no need to cock that pistol. It is a friend of Captain Shelton who is speaking."
"So," said a voice in careful, precise English. "Walk three paces forward, if you please, and slowly, v-e-r-y slowly. Now. You are a friend of the captain?"
"In a sense," I replied. "I am his son. I have come to you with a message."
"So," said the voice again, and I saw that a man was seated before me on the stone that had served as a doorstep, a man who was balancing a pistol in the palm of his hand.
"I fear I have been rude," he said, "but I find this place—what shall I say?—annoying. Your voices are alike, and I know he has a son. You say you bring a message?"
I had thought what to say.
"It is about the paper," I began. "The captain was to bring it to you here, and now he finds he cannot."
"Cannot?" he said, with the rising inflection of another language than ours. "Cannot?"