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He sat up, tearing the blankets back, because some one moved in the house, and the rain could be heard more loudly, as if a new window were open. He swung his legs free. Some one breathed heavily in the hall. Rawling clutched his revolver, and the cold of it stung. This might be Onnie, any one; but he put his finger on the switch.
She squatted on the gravel and hunted for one of the big hair-pins her jump had loosened, then used it to pierce the topmost shell. Rawling leaned against his saddle, watching the huge hands, and Pat Sheehan, the old coachman, chuckled, coming up for the tired horse. "You'll be from the West," he said, "where they string sea-shells."
Bill's naked shoulder cannoned into him, charging, and Bill's revolver clinked against his own. Rawling reeled to the stair-head, aiming as Bill caught at the man's shirt; but the cockney fell backward, crumpling down, his face purple, his teeth displayed. "In the head!" said Bill, and bent to look, pushing the plastered curls from a temple.
"I don't see how you stand the place," said Mrs. Peter. "Even if the men are respectful, they're so familiar. And anything could happen there. Denny tells me you have Poles and Russians all sorts of dreadful people." Her horror tinkled prettily in the Chinese drawing-room, but Rawling sighed. "We can't get the old sort Scotch, Swedes, the good Irish. We get any old thing.
That dam' Englishman's gone out o' there bile drunk, swearin' he'll cut San's heart out, the pup! He's gone off wavin' his knife. Now, he knows the house, an' he ain't afraid of nothin' when he's drunk. He might get that far an' try breakin' in. You lock up " "Lock up? What with?" asked Rawling. "There's not a lock in the place. Father never had them put in, and I haven't."
Rawling's foot caught in the doorway of the bright hall, and he stumbled, the light dazzling on the cockney's wet bulk hurling itself toward the great woman where she stood, her arms flung cruciform, guarding the empty room. The bodies met with a fearful jar as Rawling staggered up, and there came a crisp explosion before he could raise his hand.
"Just like a dog," whispered Bill, stealing off to a guest-room. "I'll leave my door open." He patted the revolver in his jacket and grinned affectionately. "Good-night, Boss." Rawling touched the switch inside his own door, and the big globe set in the hall ceiling blinked out.
"Sure, Mary herself bore the like among the Jew men, an' no one since that day, or will forever. An' I must go to my cookin', or Master San will have no dinner fit for him." Rawling looked after her pink flannel petticoat, greatly touched and pleased by this eulogy. Mrs. Rawling strolled out of the hall and laughed at the narrative.
"Twelve, your Honor," said Onnie, "an' me the first to go off, bein' that I'm not so pretty a man would be marryin' me that day or this. An' if herself is content, I am pleased entirely." "You're a good cook," said Rawling, honestly. "How old are you?" He had been puzzling about this; she was so wonderfully ugly that age was difficult to conjecture. But she startled him.
"You'll go get dinner, Onnie Killelia," said Rawling. "Master San is tired, Bill and Ling are coming and look there!" The faithful were marching Percival down the road to the valley-mouth in the green dusk. He walked between Jansen and Bill, a dozen men behind, and a flying scud of boys before. "An' Robbie's not hurt," said Miss Cameron, "an' San ain't, neither; so don't you worry, Onnie.
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