Free 3stalwarts by Unknown

the woman. She sat down beside her husband.
    Weaver listened to MacNod. He nodded his head.
    “You stay here, Wolff. We’ve got to look over Thompson’s house.”
    “That’s illegal entry,” said Wolff.
    “You mind your business and we’ll mind ours.”
    Probably Gil and Weaver were the only two among the company who had ever been inside of Thompson’s house, and neither of them had been beyond the little office to the right of the door. They had found Mr. Thompson a decent neighbor, but the big house had overawed them with its black slaves who seemed to feel contempt for any white man who didn’t own people like themselves, its sounds of voices from the parlor doors, and the tinkle of a spinet coming down from upstairs. To them it had been the expression of all the possessions they vaguely hoped to have come to them in their time. Weaver had been there twice to see about the loan of a yoke of oxen in the early days. Gil had come to sell a large buck he had shot once when some gentlemen had been stopping there.
    Standing on the wide verandah that fronted the river, they now felt the same awe in the face of the closed shutters. Most of the men with them caught the feeling. Only Jeams MacNod, who had some education and a fanatical contempt for all success other than his own, was ready to break down the door. He threw his weight against it, but the heavy pine panels had no thought of yielding to a Scottish scholar.
    His gesture, however, had been enough to renew their appetite. There had been nothing exciting at Wolff’s; they had come a long way, and the wearing off of the effect of beer had left them spoiling for action. When Jeams pointed out a heavy pole lying on the dock by the river shore, half a dozen of them ran down for it. They swung it against the door together. But the bars held solid. The sound of the blow was like the tap on a gigantic drum, sounding hollowly throughout the house.
    It stopped them for an instant; then they shouted. They swung the pole again; and again they got no more than the hollow crash, as if the whole house joined in one derisive shout.
    To Gil, however, the empty sound was upsetting.
    “It’ll take too long to break it down,” he said. “Why don’t we open a window?”
    The others let the pole drop.
    “That’s right,” said Weaver. “There ain’t no sense in spoiling a good door.”
    They swarmed against a window together, hacking round the shutter bolts with their hatchets. In a few minutes they had the bolts cut out, the boards pried off, and Reall had thrown his hatchet through a pane. The glass tinkled chillingly into the dark room. They lifted the sash and climbed in, one after the other.
    The room was the office, with Mr. Thompson’s desk and chairs, and little else beyond the ashes of paper on the hearth where wind in the chimney had stirred them from the grate.
    “Hell,” said Kast. “There ain’t anything in here. Let’s look around.”
    There was a short commotion at the door, before one man at last stepped into the hall. As soon as he had crossed the threshold, the others trooped after him.
    The size and darkness of the hall were impressive. The wide boards under their boots creaked a little to their shifting feet, but for the instant it sounded more as if some ghostly person were descending the staircase. While they stood still to listen, chipmunks behind one of the walls took sudden fright.
    The sound of panic reassured them. The men broke apart, going from room to room. Gil and Weaver, remaining in the hall, listened to the stamp of boots overhead and back in the kitchen. When men walked overhead a thin dust sifted from the cornices.
    “I can’t find the cellar stairs,” shouted Kast.
    “Where are you?”
    “In the pantry.”
    “Try the closet off the dining room,” said Reall.
    Weaver turned to Gil.
    “I don’t rightly know what we’re doing here, Gil.”
    “I don’t either,” Gil said.
    “Maybe we’d better go around and see they