His own fear of pistols was so great that he expected everyone else to be terrorized by the threat of using them; and yet he had never possessed nor carried a pistol in his life.
“Please—please don’t fire,” cried a trembling voice, from out the darkness. “I will do as you tell me.” And so saying the figure moved out upon the road.
Trenchon peered at her through the darkness, but whether she was old or young he could not tell. Her voice seemed to indicate that she was young.
“Why, lass,” said Trenchon, kindly, “what dost thou here at such an hour and in such a night?”
“Alas!” she cried, weeping; “my father turned me out, as he has often done before, but to-night is a bitter night, and I had nowhere to go, so I came here to be sheltered from the rain. He will be asleep ere long, and he sleeps soundly. I may perhaps steal in by a window, although sometimes he fastens them down.”
“God’s truth!” cried Trenchon, angrily. “Who is thy brute of a father?”
The girl hesitated, and then spoke as if to excuse him, but again Trenchon demanded his name.
“He is the blacksmith of the village, and Cameron is his name.”
“I remember him,” said Trenchon. “Is thy mother, then, dead?”
“Yes,” answered the girl, weeping afresh. “She has been dead these five years.”