Page:In the Roar of the Sea.djvu/197

 AN UNWILLING PRISONER.

Mr. Obadiah stood open-mouthed staring at the twins clasped in each other's arms, unable at first to understand what he saw. Then a suspicion entered his dull brain, he uttered a growl, put down the keg, his heavy brows contracted, he shut his mouth, drawing in his lips so that they disappeared, and he clenched his hands. "Wait—I'll beat you!" he said. The upset candle was on the floor, now half molten, with a pond of tallow burning with a lambent blue flicker trembling on extinction, then shooting up in a yellow flame.

In that uncertain, changeful, upward light the face of the man looked threatening, remorseless, so that Judith, in a paroxysm of fear for her brother and herself dropped, on her knee, and caught at the tin candlestick as the only weapon of defence accessible. It was hot and burnt her fingers, but she did not let go; and as she stood up the dissolved candle fell from it among some straw that littered the pavement. This at once kindled and blazed up into golden flame. For a moment the cell was full of light. Mr. Obadiah at once saw the danger. His casks of brandy were hard by—the fume of alcohol was in the air—if the fire spread and caught his stores a volume of flame would sweep up the cellar stair and set his house on fire. He hastily sprang in, and danced about the cell stamping furiously at the ignited wisps. Judith, who saw him rush forward, thought he was about to strike her and Jamie, and raised the tin candlestick in self-defence; but when she saw him engaged in trampling out the fire, tearing at the bed to drag away the blankets with which to smother the embers, she drew Jamie aside from his reach, sidled, with him clinging to her, along the wall,