out, but my throat was parched with fright, and
Penelope was clinging to my neck in silent terror.

There was another moment of silence. Then James began to laugh in that
vast ebullient way of his, and a bit of dry brush snapped sharply under
some foot. The report of the rifle shook the cabin. It must have
shaken the mountains too, it seemed to me, for the floor beneath me
rocked in time to the echoes of it rattling among the hills, and I
heard a wild scream, the cry of a man hurt to death, and the shrill
cries of startled birds fleeing to the hiding of the trees. A puff of
wind swept a thin veil of smoke into the room, but for me the air was
filled with sickening fumes, and I sank to my knees and closed my eyes
as a child does at night to shut out the perils of the darkness. I
felt Penelope's arms gripped tightly about my neck, her dead weight
dragging me down. I heard the last echoes of the shot, faintly, down
the narrow valley, and outside the incoherent shouts of men. Then
there was a silence, broken only by Penelope's sobs. It seemed to me
long hours I was there on my knees before I dared to open my eyes and
bring myself into the world again. And when I did it was to see the
room darkened and the Professor leaning against the closed door with
his hands wide-spread, as though with every muscle braced to hold it
against an onslaught. Yet he trembled so that a child might have
brushed him aside.

There was no onslaught. I waited the moment when the door would be
crashed in. I heard the clock ticking monotonously on the cupboard and
the wood crackling in the stove. The birds were singing again, and
outside in the clearing it was as peaceful as on that day when I first
came upon it, wet and shivering, to find joy in its cheerful sunniness.

I broke from Penelope's embrace and got to my feet. The Professor,
hearing me, raised his head from the door and turned to me a face
chalky-white, whiter for the dishevelled hair that hung about it.

"Davy," he whispered, "look out of the window and tell me what you see."

I had no care for any trouble that might lie ahead for me. I wanted to
be seen. I wanted to be taken from this stifling cabin with its
deafening noises and sickening fumes and above all from this mad fellow
who looked as I had seen a rat look when cornered in a garner. I ran
to the window and peered through the smutted panes, but there was no
one outside to see or to help me. The clearing was