“Why? D’ye fear Charles? Has Charles done aught—after my word to him?” He lurched up from his chair and stood glowering down on me; the tobacco pipe, dropping from his grasp, smashed on the hearth.
“No, he’s done nothing.”
“Why would you go then? Are you afraid—our ways not being yours? Why would you go?”
I answered, “I do not like the house or the folk around you. What’s there about this house, sir? What’s it in the very wind of a night? What’s all the muttering in the dark?”
He returned to his chair, and leaning forward in it, watched me intently with his red-lidded eyes.
“I feared the house,” I went on, “when I first came up through the woods with Mr. Bradbury, and saw it in its cobweb of ivy and the black pines at its back. I’ve no cause to remain here, and I’ll not remain.”
He muttered, “Yet you’ll remain.”
“I’m gaoled here, then. Is that it?”
“You’ll remain,” he repeated, “though you’ll be free to ride abroad with the young cub Oliver. You’re safe here; there’s naught in the house to fear. There’s none dares do you hurt.”
“None of those old men, your servants?” said I. “Those old brown men with the evil eyes, and the rings in their ears, and the tattoo-marks on their arms? I’m afraid, maybe, of Blunt and his crew—not of these old men.”