“If you come near this door I will send a bullet through your black heart!” was Enoch’s reply, poking the muzzle of his rifle through the loophole beside which he stood.
The widow came running from the chamber. “Enoch! Enoch!” she cried, in horror. “Would you kill him?”
“He killed my father!” cried the boy, before he thought what explanation of his secret suspicions that remark might necessitate.
“The child is mad!” she murmured, after staring at him a full minute. “You do not know what you say, Enoch. Master Halpen had naught to do with your poor father’s death.”
But Enoch had not to reply. A cry came from Bryce in the loft. “Look at that! Look at that!” he shouted, with excitement. “I just will shoot him!”
And then his old musket spoke. There was a yell from without. Enoch thought Simon Halpen himself had been shot, but the Yorker only ran around the end of the cabin to where one of his men stood howling like a wolf, and holding on to his swinging arm.
“I’ve broke his arm!” declared Bryce, proudly, coming to the head of the ladder. “He was flinging blazing clods on the roof.”
“What shall we do?” gasped the mother. “My boys will be murderers.”
“I’ll kill them all before they’ll harm you, mother,” declared young Bryce, very proud indeed that he had hit the mark, but secretly delighted as well that he had done the villainous Yorker no serious damage.
But the moment after, he shrieked aloud and came again to the top of the ladder. His face was blanched. “Oh, oh! they’ve done it–they’ve done it!” he cried. “The roof is afire. Don’t you smell it?”