"Yes, he'd been shooting Polly, too. I traced her blood tracks all the way to the front door. Hello, what's that? I thought I heard—"
I listened and there was only the sound of the rain.
"I suppose it's all right," said Billy, "we'd better close that door, though."
But before he could reach the door, Nurse Panton called him away to her corner, where she spoke in a whisper so that I should not hear, sending him, perhaps, for her cloak. Meanwhile I came from behind the counter to my former seat before the open doorway, where I sat staring into the darkness, unable to feel any more, but just benumbed. Across my weariness flickered the mournful soliloquy of a poor barn-door fowl—"Yesterday an egg, to-morrow a feather duster! What's the good of anythin', why, nothin'."
Then I, too, heard a sound in the night, and because Billy and the nurse were muttering, I stood up with the candle-light behind me, trying to see into the darkness. Billy said afterward he had moved quickly, to shut the door, but I waved him back just as the shot rang out.
The explosion blinded, deafened, seemed even to scorch me, while the mirror on the wall came crashing down. Stunned, dazzled, horrified, I felt a dull rage at this attempted murder.
A second revolver-shot stirred my hair, and I'm afraid then that I lost my temper. I am not a fish-fag that I should stoop to fighting a creature such as Polly, but I would have died rather than let her see one trace of fear.
Billy rushed past the firing to reach the door and close it, but I ordered him to desist, then grasped the candle and held it out to show a better light.
"Lower your lights!" I shouted into the dark, "you fired too high!"
A revolver crashed on the door-step, and low down within three feet of the ground, I saw a dreadful face convulsed with rage, changing to fear. The woman was sinking to her knees, she buried her face in grimy, blood-smeared hands, and rocked to and fro in awful abandonment of grief.