"I—yes! I'm tol'able sure. I have evidence," Elisha replied. "At least I figger I have."
"Shucks, 'Lish!" Eleazer cried. "Where's your backbone? You figger you have! Don't you know it? Ain't you beheld the loot with your own eyes?"
Elisha nodded.
"Then why on earth don't you stand up in your boots an' say so?"
The door opened and Sylvia entered then stopped, arrested on the threshold by the sound of angry voices.
Inquiringly she looked from Marcia to the men, and back again.
No one, however, heeded her presence.
Marcia, with whitened lips but with face grave and determined, remained with her back to the stairway door, her arms stretched across its broad panels, her eyes never leaving Elisha Winslow's. There was something in her face Sylvia had never seen there—a light of battle; a fierceness as of a mother fighting for her child; a puzzling quality to which no name could be given.
Suddenly, as the girl studied her, recognition of this new characteristic flashed upon her understanding.