ringly.

"I'm going to shoot."

"Sakes alive--an' my panel, an' my best brass candlesticks!"

"Take them down."

She gave in, and unpinned the ballads.

"Now stand aside."

He stepped back to the other side of the room, and set his back to the
door.

"Don't move," he said to Calvin Oke, whose chair stood immediately under
the line of fire, "your head is not the least in the way. And don't
turn it either, but keep your eye on the candle to the right."

This was spoken in the friendliest manner, but it hardly reassured Oke,
who would have preferred to keep his eye on the deadly weapon now being
lifted behind his back. Nevertheless he did not disobey, but sat still,
with his eyes fixed on the mantelshelf, and only his shoulders twitching
to betray his discomposure.

_Bang!_

The room was suddenly full of sound, then of smoke and the reek of
gunpowder. As the noise broke on their ears one of the candles went out
quietly. The candlestick did not stir, but a bullet was embedded in the
panel behind. Calvin Oke felt his scalp nervously.

"One," counted the stranger. He walked quietly to the table, set down
his smoking pistol, and took up the other, looking round at the same
time on the white faces that stared on him behind the thick curls of
smoke. Stepping back to his former position, he waited while they could
count twenty, lifted the second pistol high, brought it smartly down to
the aim and fired again.

The second candle went out, and a second bullet buried itself in Prudy's
panel.

So he served the six, one after another, without a miss. Twice he
reloaded both pistols slowly, and while he did so not a word was spoken.
Indeed, the only sound to be heard came from Uncle Issy, who, being a
trifle asthmatical with age, felt some inconvenience from the smoke in
his throat. By the time the last shot was fired the company could
hardly see one another. Prudy, two of whose dishes had been shaken off
the dresser, had tumbled upon a settle, and sat there, rocking herself
to and fro, with her apron over her head.

The sound of firing had reached the neighbouring houses, and by this
time the passage was full of men and women, agog for a tragedy.
The door burst open. Through the dense atmosphere the stranger descried
a crowd of faces in the passage. He was the first to speak.

"Good folk, you alarm yourselves without cause. I have merely been
pointing an argument that I and my friends happen to be holdi