Miss Campbell decided not to reply to Lupo’s outburst. It only excited him and it was evident her arguments had no effect.
And now, after what seemed an interminable time, the door resounded with the blows of a woodman’s axe.
“Go up into the gallery, Phoebe,” ordered Miss Campbell, trembling in spite of her determination not to be frightened.
Phoebe rose and walked to the middle of the room. Her face was transfigured and she looked almost unearthly.
“I am not afraid,” she said. “I believe that I will be saved from my enemies. God is sending someone to save me.”
But the Motor Maids and Miss Campbell had no such faith to bolster up their faltering courage. During the long, lonely evenings on the mountainside when Phoebe had read aloud to her father from the New Testament, which he seemed to like best, there had grown in her mind a belief as strong as it was simple. There had never been any people to shake her convictions with arguments, nor books to suggest doubts. And now in her soul she had called for help and she believed it would come even at the eleventh hour.
Billie, whose faith in prayer was not unmixed with a desire for action of a very vigorous and immediate variety, seized an old rifle hung from a nail on the wall. She had no idea whether there were any loads in it, but she had made up her mind to use the butt-end on the first man who entered the room. In the meantime, the axe had crashed through one of the thick, hardwood panels, making a slit broad enough to see through.
“I’ll shoot any man who comes into this room,” called Billie. “Keep out.”
An eye was placed at the hole in the door. Billie felt instinctively it was Lupo’s.
“That there old rusty gun ain’t got no loads in it, Miss. You kin shoot all you like.”