ONE:As soon as the supper was over, Reuben still munching bread and bacon went up to his wife's room. The sunlight was gone, but the sky was blood-red behind Boarzell's hulk, and a flushed afterglow hung on the ceiling and moved slowly like a fire over the bed. The corners of the room, the shadows cast by the furniture, were black and smoky. On Naomi's face, on her body[Pg 114] outlined under the sheet, the lights crimsoned and smouldered. There was a strange fiery reflection in her eyes as she turned them to the door.The next night, being the eve of the trial, Black Jack entered the Mitre, and, ordering a fresh gallon of stout ale, proceeded on to the little room where he had seen Calverley, and in which, around an oak table which nearly filled the area of the apartment, ten men were seated. A measure stood before them which they had just emptied, and were murmuring at their leader's close hand that restricted them to a single gallon.
THREE:"I dursn't nowit's no useyou're a hard man."The cry rose from the mass up at the stalls, as the big dark figure with flapping hat-brim suddenly sprang out of the dusk and ran to meet Mexico Bill. Reuben was an old man, and his arm had lost its cunning, but he carried a stout ash stick and the maniac saw no one but the women at the hedge. The next moment Reuben's stick had come against his forehead with a terrific crack, and he had tumbled head over heels into a gorse-bush.
THREE: