David Malcolm

by Nelson Lloyd

"You can fix it all up with the squire," I heard Joe Holmes say.
"There's really nothing again you, only you must comply with the law."

Then James spoke—to my astonishment not in a bold demand that the
Professor surrender, but softly, asking him to be careful with the gun.

"Nobody has nothing again you, Professor," he said as gently as he would have spoken to me, and hearing this I took heart, for with James in such a temper there seemed no danger of a serious clash.

"No one has nothing against me," the Professor repeated in a tone of irony. "You only want to drag me through the village before the squire. Tell the squire to come here to me and explain."

There was a moment of silence. It was so quiet outside that even the birds seemed to be listening and watching; then came the swish of weeds trampled under foot.

"Be off, the whole crew of you," cried the man in the doorway, and I saw the butt of the gun rise to his shoulder.

I wanted to cry out, but my throat was parched with fright, and
Penelope was clinging to my neck in silent terror.

There was another moment of silence. Then James began to laugh in that vast ebullient way of his, and a bit of dry brush snapped sharply under some foot. The report of the rifle shook the cabin. It must have shaken the mountains too, it seemed to me, for the floor beneath me rocked in time to the echoes of it rattling among the hills, and I heard a wild scream, the cry of a man hurt to death, and the shrill cries of startled birds fleeing to the hiding of the trees. A puff of wind swept a thin veil of smoke into the room, but for me the air was filled with sickening fumes, and I sank to my knees and closed my eyes as a child does at night to shut out the perils of the darkness. I felt Penelope's arms gripped tightly about my neck, her dead weight dragging me down. I heard the last echoes of the shot, faintly, down the narrow valley, and outside the incoherent shouts of men. Then there was a silence, broken only by Penelope's sobs. It seemed to me long hours I was there on my knees before I dared to open my eyes and bring myself into the world again. And when I did it was to see the room darkened and the Professor leaning against the closed door with his hands wide-spread, as though with every muscle braced to hold it against an onslaught. Yet he trembled so that a child might have brushed him aside.

There was no onslaught. I waited the moment when the door would be crashed in. I heard the clock ticking monotonously on the cupboard and the wood crackling in the stove. The birds were singing again, and outside in the clearing it was as peaceful as on that day when I first came upon it, wet and shivering, to find joy in its cheerful sunniness.

I broke from Penelope's embrace and got to my feet. The Professor, hearing me, raised his head from the door and turned to me a face chalky-white, whiter for the dishevelled hair that hung about it.