Shuddering, pale-faced, the rogues stood eyeing him,—the old brown men peering like so many ghosts from the dark by the door, the dying candles casting only a dim light, the leaping flame reflected in the puddle of blood where Blunt had lain. My grandfather faced them still, laughing upon them. The wind came rolling up, and struck the house; the crying of the wind was as the crying of many voices; the rushing of the wind as the onrush of the sea. He ceased to laugh; staring at him, while my uncle, white to the lips and wide-eyed, watched him from the hearth, I saw him stagger. The pistols dropped from his hands. He fell with a crash across the hearth.
Chapter XXXIII. Carrion Crows
My uncle, rushing forward, dropped on his knees beside him, and lifted up his head.
I took the glass from the press, and poured a little of the spirit into it, and handed this to my uncle, who moistened my grandfather’s lips with it, and sought to dribble a few drops down his throat. And nearer, nearer yet, crept the rogues; recoiling from the living, they feared him still, lest even now he should arise, and his voice send them scurrying as so little a while before. But he lay still,—his eyes open and glassy; his lips parted. My uncle lowered his head to the floor, and rising, said, “I think him dead”—but with no tremor in his voice or hint of sorrow or compassion.
And instantly the woman Barwise laughed horribly, and screamed, “Dead, and we’ve naught to fear!”—and pointing her hand at me, “What now, Mr. John—what now?”
My uncle, in a harsh voice cried out, “Be silent, woman! Respect the dead! Out of the room, all of you!”
She answered with defiance, “Not now! While he was livin’, we couldn’t have what we’re here for. And I for one stays here, and don’t stir for you; that’s what I say, and that’s what ye all say, if ye’re men.” Whereat her sons thrust their way forward, and the old men piped shrilly, “Ay, ay, that’s what we all say. Ay, ay!”
My uncle said disdainfully, “I can tell you only that, if you think to find treasure in the house, you deceive yourselves grievously. Do you think that my father was such a fool as to hoard money or jewels in this house with such a company as you about him? I promise you that all he had was long since converted into East India stock and the like; he kept nothing by him.”
“But that’s a lie!” Thrale piped. “He had treasure by him. Many’s the time he’s been laughing to himself for thinking that we who’d fought and bled, and risked the sea and the shot and the rope, sought our share of it, and never took a dollar of it. I’ve been minded to stick this knife into him many a time!”—and his skeleton-hand showed a lean, glittering blade, “Oh, and I come in one day and he don’t hear me, and he has a box and a death’s head, and ’tis all on fire with baubles. All aflame! What’s come of ’em, Mr. Charles, what’s come of ’em?”
“I tell you—” my uncle began; but their yell of derision silenced him; a wicked ring of faces was about us: old faces stained with all the sins, old eyes bright for the lust of treasure, old hands clutching and covetous; their voices sounding as the cawing of crows; like carrion crows they flapped about us, and the dead man lying stretched across the hearth. The tall Barwise sons watched them, grinning and muttering between themselves. Four of Blunt’s men had sneaked back into the room.