It was a small thing, but it was enough. It checked the men as effectually as if it had been the knell of doom. They hung arrested, eye questioning eye; or, in turn, tip-toeing to gain their weapons, they cast looks of menace at the women. And they listened with murder in their eyes.
“If you breathe a word,” Giles hissed, “I’ll throttle you!”
And he raised his hand for silence. The knock was repeated.
“Some one must go,” the gipsy lad muttered.
His face was sallow with fear.
“Go?” Bess answered, in a low tone, but one of fierce passion. “Who’s to go but me? See now where you’d be without me!”
“And do you see here,” Lunt made answer, and he drew a pistol from his pocket, and cocked it, “one word more than’s needful, and I’ll blow your brains out, my lass. If I go, you go first! So mark me, and speak ’em fair!”
And with a gesture he pointed to the dairy, and beckoned to the other men to retire thither.
He seemed to be about to command Henrietta to go with them. But he saw that in sheer terror she would disobey him, or he thought her sufficiently hidden where she was. For when he had seen the other men out he followed them, and holding the door of the dairy half open showed Bess the pistol.
“Now,” he said, “and by G—d, remember. For I’ll keep my word.”