She set down the candle on the little bare wooden table, where it gleamed solemnly in the gaunt room. Then she fell to feverishly helping the children to dress, darting violently from one to another, and half paralyzing Billy, whose fumbling, freezing fingers could not keep pace with her frantic impatience. He dropped a boot, and the sound seemed to echo through the silent house like a diabolical thunder-clap. He cowered before her blazing eyes as she picked up the boot and violently dumped his foot into it.
“Are we goin’ out, mother?” he said, so as not to scream. His words sounded sinister and terrible to himself.
“Yes; I’ll go an’ see if the girls are finished dressin’.” She took up the candle, and her whisper grew sterner. “Don’t make a sound!”
“But where are we goin’, mother?” he said, to detain her for an instant.
“Goin’ home. We’re throwin’ up the position!” And for the first time the exultation in her voice raised it above a whisper. Then, putting her forefinger to her lip again, “Not a sound!” she breathed, menacingly, and moved on tiptoe to the door, her face set and shining, her shadow tumbling grotesquely on the walls and ceilings.
“A-a-a-h!” Billy fell back on the bed, screaming. Like a flash his mother turned; her hand was clapped fiercely over his mouth.
“You little devil!” she hissed. “What do you mean by disobeyin’?”
She withdrew her hand. “What are you shakin’ ’bout? There’s light ’nough.” She drew up the blind, and a faint moonlight blurred itself through the frosty glass. “You’re growed up now, you big booby. An’ your brothers are with you.”
“I’ll go with you,” he gasped, clutching at her skirt.
“With that crutch o’ yours, you pesky eyesore!” she whispered, angrily. “You’ll stay with the little uns, bless their brave little hearts.” And she clasped the dazed children to her breast. “The Lord hes punished him for his cruelty to you.... Finish your dressin’, quick.” She released the two little boys and glided cautiously from the room, holding the candle low, so that her great wavering shadow darkened the room even before the thicker horror of blackness fell when she was gone. The three children pressed together, their heartbeats alone audible in the awful stillness. They were too bewildered and terrified to exchange even a whisper. An impalpable oppression brooded over the icy room, and a dull torpor possessed their brain, so that they made no effort to understand. They only felt that something unreal was happening, something preternaturally solemn. After a dream-like interval of darkness, the mysterious rustling was repeated without, a thin line of light crept again under the door, and their mother’s face reappeared, gleaming lurid in the circle of the candle-rays. The two girls loomed in her wake, a big and a little, both wrapped up for a journey, but shivering and yawning and rubbing their eyes, still glued together by sleep. The younger boys, who had remained numb, guiltily gave the last hasty touches to their costume under the irate gaze of their mother. But Billy’s face had grown convulsed.