“What are you doing here, Erichsen?” were the words.
“I have just had my supper. I was told to have it here.”
“Oh, you’ve had it, have you? Then why the devil haven’t you cleared out?” roared young Sullivan, losing all control. “I tell you what, Peggy, this man’s a cold-blooded murderer. That’s what he is, and that’s what he’s here for. Why they didn’t hang him, God knows; but they didn’t, so we’ve got the benefit instead. Let me never catch him in here again. He’d cut your throat as soon as look at you. Clear out, you gallows-bird, and show your nose inside the palisade again if you dare!”
Tom replied only with his eye, and only scorn was in its steady gaze. When the other ceased, he waited a little to ascertain if that were all; then he turned upon his heel, opened the door, walked out and shut it very quietly behind him.
There were high voices in the kitchen as he went his way. And Tom himself was less cool when he reached his room, where, indeed, he lay awake half the night still wondering whether Nat Sullivan had ever struck Peggy O’Brien, and whether Peggy would admit it if he had. But in the end he slept soundly on the clean straw with which he first took care to line his bunk.
Soundly but not long: for in the middle of the night, as it seemed to Tom, the clanging of a great bell brought him to his feet in a state of high alarm. He slid into his trousers and rushed out. It was that black hour before dawn, and at first in the failing starlight he could see nobody; then he descried a figure in a long coat parading to and fro before the huts; but the bell was silent, though still swaying from the twisted arm of a gigantic gum-tree, when Tom ran up and inquired of
