“Some one has broken in the outer door,” replied Mrs. Dare, calmly. “He is in the back kitchen now, but the inner door is bolted.”
Reube took the lamp from her hand and started down stairs.
“O, my boy, what are you doing? You have no weapon. O, if only we had—”
But Reube interrupted these words, which now had an all-unwonted tremor in them.
“Nothing else to be done, mother,” he said, quietly. “Don’t be scared! He won’t bother me, whoever he is!” And as his mother looked at him she felt strangely reassured. Or, perhaps it was something in his voice which satisfied her. She snatched up her big Paisley shawl, flung it over her nightgown, and followed Reube at a discreet distance.
Reube opened a door leading from the hall to the inner kitchen. At the same moment the door between the two kitchens was battered in with a loud crash, and there entered a terrifying apparition. It was Jim Paul, drunk, and with a wild glitter in his bloodshot eyes. His face and huge, burly form were stained with the blood of various fights, and he carried in his hand the ax with which he had broken down the doors.
Jim Paul’s appearance was well calculated to daunt an older heart than Reube’s, but Reube’s heart was of a dauntless fiber. A cold, steady light seemed to shine from his pale eyes as they met the fierce and feverish gaze of the intruder, who promptly stopped and glanced aside uneasily. Reube’s mouth and broad brow, usually so boyish, looked as grim as iron as he stepped up coolly to the drunken giant and asked him what he meant by breaking into the house.
Paul hesitated, beginning to quail before the stronger will that confronted him.
“Give me that ax!” said Reube, quietly.
Paul handed over the weapon with most prompt and deferential obedience, and began to stammer an inarticulate apology. Reube kept eyeing him without another word, and Paul grew anxious and worried under the gaze. At last he plunged his great hand deep down into his trousers pocket and drew forth a lot of silver and copper coins. These he pressed Reube to accept, presently breaking into maudlin protestations of esteem.