"Look!" Bill screamed his final warning.
Father—or was it Uncle Joey?—had left his seat, was reeling drunkenly across the room, then banging his fists on the bar, demanding a bottle of gin, "and look sharp abart it, Marster!" Uncle Joey used to call him "Marster," in sarcasm of his successful brother the publican.
Uncle Thomas waved him away. "Not a drop," he said over his shoulder; "you'd better have another sleep, James. As I was a saying——"
The drunkard snatched a bottle of rum, splashed out a tumblerful, and poured it down his throat, then dashed the heavy glass in his brother's face.
Bill ran to interfere, to restrain his father, but somehow he was terrified and dared not touch him. There was something uncanny, horrible, from which he shrank.
The landlord's forehead showed a long bright gash, then spurting blood which blinded him, even as he vaulted across the bar. But the other, the maniac, had seized an oaken trivet stool, and laid about him, screaming, froth at his lips, demoniac rage convulsing his face—was it not Uncle Joey's voice, his face?—while he brought the weapon down on his brother's head.
The door behind the bar had opened, and Bill's mother stood there, a gaunt, gray, weather-beaten, haggard woman dressed in rusty black silk, a poke bonnet, lace mittens, Sunday best; and in her hand was a Bible stamped on the cover with a large gold cross. As she came round the end of the counter, she held out that cross, as though it could protect her from the maniac, who turned brandishing the stool to beat her brains out. Without showing the least fear she held the cross before his eyes, and at the sight of it he seemed to shrink away. He even tried to protect himself with the stool. He, not the woman, was afraid, and she pressed him backwards until he came against the deal table which stood in the middle of the room.
"Get out, you beast—get out, I say—get out, Joey, thou body-snatching devil!"
It seemed to the people as though James, her husband, died. The stool crashed to the floor, the light went out of the man's writhen face. The bargeman's body collapsed in a heap.
The woman sank down on the floor, shaking all over in abject terror, sobbing hysterically. "Bill," she wailed, "go thou—warm water—bandages—for Thomas——"