Nevertheless, the sense of being alone in the house with a dead man, and more than a mile from any living soul, was disquieting.  In truth, there was room for uneasiness.  ’Lizabeth knew that some part of the old man’s hoard lay up-stairs in the room with him.  Of late she had, under his eye, taken from a silver tankard in the tall chest by the bed such moneys as from week to week were wanted to pay the farm hands; and she had seen papers there, too—­title-deeds, maybe.  The house itself lay in a cup of the hill-side, backed with steep woods—­so steep that, in places, anyone who had reasons (good or bad) for doing so, might well see in at any window he chose.  And to Hooper’s Farm, down the valley, was a far cry for help.  Meditating on this, ’Lizabeth stepped to the kitchen window and closed the shutter; then, reaching down an old horse-pistol from the rack above the mantelshelf, she fetched out powder and bullet and fell to loading quietly, as one who knew the trick of it.

And yet the sense of danger was not so near as that of loneliness—­of a pervading silence without precedent in her experience, as if its master’s soul in flitting had, whatever Scripture may say, taken something out of the house with it.  ’Lizabeth had known this kitchen for a score of years now; nevertheless, to-night it was unfamiliar, with emptier corners and wider intervals of bare floor.  She laid down the loaded pistol, raked the logs together, and set the kettle on the flame.  She would take comfort in a dish of tea.

There was company in the singing of the kettle, the hiss of its overflow on the embers, and the rattle with which she set out cup, saucer, and teapot.  She was bending over the hearth to lift the kettle, when a sound at the door caused her to start up and listen.

The latch had been rattled:  not by the wind, for the December night without was misty and still.  There was somebody on the other side of the door; and, as she turned, she saw the latch lowered back into its place.

With her eyes fastened on this latch, she set down the kettle softly and reached out for her pistol.  For a moment or two there was silence.  Then someone tapped gently.

The tapping went on for half a minute; then followed silence again.  ’Lizabeth stole across the kitchen, pistol in hand, laid her ear against the board, and listened.

Yes, assuredly there was someone outside.  She could catch the sound of breathing, and the shuffling of a heavy boot on the door-slate.  And now a pair of knuckles repeated the tapping, more imperiously.

“Who’s there?”

A man’s voice, thick and husky, made some indistinct reply.

’Lizabeth fixed the cap more securely on her pistol, and called again—­

“Who’s there?”

“What the devil—­” began the voice.

’Lizabeth shot back the bolt and lifted the latch.

“If you’d said at once ‘twas William come back, you’d ha’ been let in sooner,” she said quietly.