A moment more, and he had turned, closed the
door, and fled.
"What a man can it be?" said the shepherd.
The rest, between the awfulness of their late discovery and the odd
conduct of this third visitor, looked as if they knew not what to
think, and said nothing. Instinctively they withdrew farther and
farther from the grim gentleman in their midst, whom some of them
seemed to take for the prince of darkness himself, till they formed
a remote circle, an empty space of floor being left between them
and him--
"Circulus, cujus centrum diabolus."
The room was so silent--though there were more than twenty people
in it--that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against
the window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray
drop that fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady
puffing of the man in the corner, who had now resumed his pipe of
long clay.
The stillness was unexpectedly broken. The distant sound of a gun
reverberated through the air, apparently from the direction of the
county town.
"Be jiggered!" cried the stranger who had sung the song, jumping
up.
"What does that mean?" asked several.
"A prisoner escaped from the gaol--that 's what it means.
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