Bess lit the candle, steadied herself, betraying nothing of the dread that was in her heart.
“I am tired, and it is growing late.”
“Tut, tut, lass, stay with us a little longer. Have you listened too much to an old man’s tales?”
Bess yawned behind her hand, laughed, and walked towards the stairs.
“Ursula will sit and listen to you, uncle,” she said. “There is hot water in the kettle if you want more punch.”
She opened the stair door, and, shutting it quickly after her, shot the bolt on the inside. Isaac had started up from the settle, and limped across the room with an impatient grin upon his face. Bess heard him try the door and go back balked to the fire when he found it bolted. Holding the candle above her head she climbed the stairs slowly, step by step, frowning when the bare boards creaked, and halting continually to listen. She had drawn one of Jeffray’s pistols from her bosom, and the steel barrel quivered a little as her fingers strained nervously about the stock.
Coming to the narrow landing at the top of the stairs, she stood listening, with her head bent forward, the candle shaded behind her hand. The two doors that opened upon the landing were shut, and Bess knew not what their black panelling might hide. Putting her ear close to the door of her own bedroom, she heard the casement rattling from time to time, and a sound as of some one at work on the iron bars closing the window. The candle shook a little in her hand. Setting it down on an old chest by the wall, she gathered her courage, and, lifting the latch, threw the door open at arm’s-length.
Outlined against the dark square of the window, Bess saw the head and shoulders of a man. He appeared to be half kneeling on the window-ledge without, working at the clamps that held the iron bars in their sockets. The casement frame was open, and for the moment Bess could not see his face.
He looked up suddenly on hearing the door open, swore, and hung there staring at Bess as she stood in the doorway with the candle behind her. She had recognized Dan, and understood with a flash of fury why he was loosening the bars of the window. There was a short ladder leaning against the cottage wall under Dan’s feet. He let himself half drop from the window-sill as Bess came forward into the room hiding her pistol behind her back.
“Dan, you devil—”