"Gone," she answered solemnly.
"Where?"
"Where you will never find them."
"And you think to get off with that?" he hissed; and advanced a step towards her. "You lie!" he cried furiously. "You have them. And if you do not give them up----"
"I have them not!" she answered firmly; and little did he suspect how wildly her heart was leaping behind the bold front she showed him. Little did he suspect, the deadly terror she had had to surmount before she penetrated so far into this loathsome house. "I have them not," she repeated. "Nor have I any fear of you. There is that here that is your master and mine. Come up, come up," she continued, a touch of wildness in her manner, and she mounted a step or two of the narrow staircase, and beckoned him to follow her. "Come up and you will see him."
"You drab!" he cried, "do you come down, or it will be the worse for you! Do you hear me? Come down, you slut, or when I fetch you I will have no mercy. You don't know what I shall do to you; I do, and----"
He stood, he was silent, he choked with rage; for as if he had not spoken, her figure first and then her feet, mounting without pause or hesitation, vanished from sight. He was left, scared and baffled, alone in the great desolate kitchen where his light shone a mere spark, making visible the darkness that canopied him. A rat moving in the dim fringe between light and shadow startled him. A rope of onions swayed by the draught of air that blew through the open door, brought the sweat to his brow. He took two steps forward and one backward; the shroud on the cradle fluttered, and but for the men waiting outside, he would have fled at once and given up woman and booty. But fear of ridicule still conquered fear of death; conquered even the superstition that lay dormant in his Irish blood; he forced himself onward. His eyes fixed balefully, his hands withheld from contact with the wall--as if he had been a woman with skirts--he crept upwards till his gaze rose above the level of the upper floor; then for a moment the light of two thick candles, half-burned, gave him back his courage. His brow relaxed, he sprang with a cry up the upper stairs, set his foot in the room and stood!
On the huge low wooden bed from which the coarse blue and white bedding protruded, two bodies lay sheeted. At their feet the candles burned dull before the window that should have been open, but was shut; as the thick noisome air of the room, that turned him sick and faint, told him. Near the bed, on the farther side, stood that he sought; Sophia, her eyes burning, her face like paper. His prey then was there, there, within his reach; but she had not spoken without reason. Death, death in its most loathsome aspect lay between them; and the man's heart was as water, his feet like lead.
"If you come near me," she whispered, "if you come a step nearer, I will snatch this sheet from them, and I will wrap you in it! And you will die! In eight days you will be dead! Will you see them? Will you see what you will be?" And she lowered her hand to raise the sheet.
He stepped back a pace, livid and shaking. "You she-devil!" he muttered. "You witch!"