Mistress Barwise uttered a shrill scream, and rushed back among the rogues; they broke, fell back; scuttled like rats about the room; seeking the door, and finding Roger and the runners standing grimly before it, they huddled together against the wall. Mr. Bradbury, stepping forward, demanded swiftly, “What is this? Where is Mr. Craike?”
I pointed to the bed, “My grandfather lies there,” I said. “He died an hour since, sir—died while he faced these rogues. What now?”
Mr. Bradbury whispered, “Sir Gavin waits below! We hold the hall-door and the stair. We come well-armed,—we’re none too many.”
“And these rogues!”
“Bid them go! If they go quietly, so much the better for us, so much the less scandal. We’re not so many that they may not pass,—unless you’d hold them here! Yet bid them go! We’re not too many!”
I faced them then; I cried out, to be heard above a gust of the falling wind, “You’ve yet a chance to get away. Go now—all of you—out of this house! You served my grandfather, and for that I’ve no mind to punish you for what you’ve done this night. Take what’s your own—no more, and be away from this house within an hour. D’ye hear me? Go!”
Galt and the runners stood aside at a wave of Mr. Bradbury’s hand. Like a flight of carrion crows the rogues sped from the room; save only Mistress Barwise, and she, her eyes blazing, her mouth spitting curses, her hands clawing the air, as she backed from the room, wore rather the aspect of an aged cat than of a carrion crow. Pell-mell they fled, as swiftly as their withered shanks would bear them; clattered along the corridor, and were gone.
So there were left in the room with the dead only Mr. Bradbury and his men, my kinsfolk and myself. My uncle, lounging in his father’s chair, with a poor assumption of his old effrontery, asked of Mr. Bradbury, “By what authority, pray tell me, does this lad ape the master of the house? As heir to Craike?”
“I shall leave the question unanswered, Charles,” said Mr. Bradbury gravely, motioning towards the bed. “This is neither the time nor the place.”
“By what authority?” my uncle repeated, his eyes suddenly alight.