‘What a man can it be?’ said the shepherd.
The rest, between the awfulness of their late discovery and the odd conduct of this third visitor, looked as if they knew not what to think, and said nothing. Instinctively they withdrew further and further from the grim gentleman in their midst, whom some of them seemed to take for the Prince of Darkness himself; till they formed a remote circle, an empty space of floor being left between them and him—
‘ . . . circulus, cujus centrum diabolus.’
The room was so silent—though there were more than twenty people in it—that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against the window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray drop that fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady puffing of the man in the corner, who had now resumed his pipe of long clay.
The stillness was unexpectedly broken. The distant sound of a gun reverberated through the air—apparently from the direction of the county-town.
‘Be jiggered!’ cried the stranger who had sung the song, jumping up.
‘What does that mean?’ asked several.
‘A prisoner escaped from the jail—that’s what it means.’
All listened. The sound was repeated, and none of them spoke but the man in the chimney-corner, who said quietly, ‘I’ve often been told that in this county they fire a gun at such times; but I never heard it till now.’
‘I wonder if it is my man?’ murmured the personage in cinder-gray.