"Are you frightened, Sam?"
"Too plenty much," he quavered, "me flitened bad."
He lighted his pipe and seemed, like me, to be eased by human company. Once only he moved, and in the queerest way came with his long yellow fingers to touch me, then timid, but reassured, crept back to his stool in the corner.
Soon Nurse Panton joined us, her hair in corkscrews, looking very plain, peevish because she had not been called at midnight. "What's the matter?" she asked crossly, and for answer I pulled down the blinds. She shivered as she passed the open door to take a chair behind it. She begged me to close the door, but the night was warm, and besides I dared not. Nurse and Chinaman each had a glass of port, and so did I, feeling much better afterward.
An hour passed, the Chinaman nodding like those ridiculous mandarin figures with loose heads, the nurse pallid against the gloom, staring until she got on my nerves. I always disliked that woman with her precise routine and large flat feet.
Far off I heard the thud of a gunshot, then three shots all together, and afterward a fifth. The evil in the night was coming nearer, and I said to myself, "If I were really frightened I should close that door. I'm half a coward."
The hero himself had strung his Victoria Cross upon a riband which I wore about my neck. Could I wear the cross and set an example of cowardice to these poor creatures who crouched in the corners of the room? To show fear is a privilege of the underbred. But I did long for Jesse.
Through the murmurs of the nearer rain, I felt a throb in the ground, then heard a sound grow, of a horse galloping. The swift soft rhythm, now loud, now very faint again, then very near, echoed against the barns, thundered across the bridge, splashed through the flooded yard, and ceased abruptly.
Billy had come home from the Falls, he was stabling his roan, he was crossing the yard in haste, his spurs clanked at the door-step and, dreading his news, a sudden panic seized me. I fled behind the bar.
He entered, astream with rain, shading his eyes against the candle-light; then as I moved he called out, as though I were at a distance, begging me for brandy. His face was haggard, his hand as he drank was covered with dried blood, he slammed the glass on the counter so that it broke.