She saw the face of her friend in the
darkness, very near to her. She needed sleep to equip herself for the
fight, and while thinking so she slept. The moonlight faded altogether,
and left the room dark. Beneath the window the stream went singing
through the lawn. After all, its message had been revealed to her in its
due season.
CHAPTER XIII
CHAYNE RETURNS
"Hullo," cried Captain Barstow, as he wandered round the library after
luncheon. "Here's a scatter-gun."
He took the gun from a corner where it stood against the wall, opened the
breech, shut it again, and turning to the open window lifted the stock to
his shoulder.
"I wonder whether I could hit anything nowadays," he said, taking careful
aim at a tulip in the garden. "Any cartridges, Skinner?"
"I don't know, I am sure," Garratt Skinner replied, testily. The
newspapers had only this moment been brought into the room, and he did
not wish to be disturbed. Sylvia had never noticed that double-barreled
gun before; and she wondered whether it had been brought into the room
that morning. She watched Captain Barstow bustle into the hall and back
again. Finally he pounced upon an oblong card-box which lay on the top of
a low book-case. He removed the lid and pulled out a cartridge.
"Hullo!" said he. "No. 6. The very thing! I am going to take a pot at the
starlings, Skinner.
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