"What is it, Henry?" she cried.
"The d——d scoundrels shot at me with the child in my arms," he answered, looking in his indignation singularly like Beth herself in a stormy mood. As he spoke he turned to the hall door, and walked out into the street bareheaded.
"For the love of the Lord, sir," Riley remonstrated, keeping well out of the way himself.
But Captain Caldwell walked off down the middle of the road alone deliberately to the police station, his wife standing meanwhile on the doorstep, with the light behind her, coolly awaiting his return.
"Pull down the blind in the sitting-room, Riley, and keep Miss Beth there," was all she said.
Presently Captain Caldwell returned with a police-officer and two men. They immediately began to search the room. The glass of a picture had been shattered at the far end. Riley pulled the picture to one side, and discovered something imbedded in the wall behind, which he picked out with his pocket-knife and brought to the light. It looked like a disc all bent out of shape. He turned it every way, examining it, then tried it with his teeth.
"I thought so," he said significantly. "It wouldn't be yer honour they'd be afther wid a silver bullet. I heard her tell 'em herself to try one."
"And I said if they missed they'd be damned," Beth exclaimed triumphantly.
"Beth!" cried her mother, seizing her by the arm to shake her, "how dare you use such a word?"
"I heard it in church," said Beth, in an injured tone.