She was going into it
now. Her life was beginning at last. When the sun had left the
windows and the walls were grey she turned back into the wood and
led the way silently towards home.
The house that night was very strange with her father dead in it.
She sat, because she thought it her duty, in his bedroom. He lay on
his bed, with his beard carefully combed and brushed now, spread out
upon the sheet. His closed eyes and mouth gave him a grave and
reverend appearance which he had never worn in his life. He lay
there, under the flickering candle-light, like some saint who at
length, after a life of severe discipline, had entered into the joy
of his Lord. Beneath the bed was the big black box.
Maggie did not look at her father. She sat there, near the dark
window, her hands folded on her lap. She thought of nothing at all
except the rats. She was not afraid of them but they worried her.
They had been a trouble in the house for a long time past, poison
had been laid for them and they had refused to take it. They had
had, perhaps, some fear of the Reverend Charles, at any rate they
scampered and scurried now behind the wainscoting as though
conscious of their release.
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