CHAPTER XVI
THE COMING OF NIGHT
It was not yet full dusk, for the shadows were still swinging out from
the mountains and a ghost of colour lingered in the west, but midnight
lay in the open eyes of Jerry Strann. There had been no struggle, no
outcry, no lifting of head or hand. One instant his eyes were closed,
and then, indeed, he looked like death; the next instant the eyes open,
he smiled, the wind stirred in his bright hair. He had never seemed so
happily alive as in the moment of his death. Fatty Matthews held the
mirror close to the faintly parted lips, examined it, and then drew
slowly back towards the door, his eyes steady upon Mac Strann.
"Mac," he said, "it's come. I got just this to say: whatever you do, for
God's sake stay inside the law!"
And he slipped through the door and was gone.
But Mac Strann did not raise his head or cast a glance after the
marshal. He sat turning the limp hand of Jerry back and forth in his
own, and his eyes wandered vaguely through the window and down to the
roofs of the village.
Night thickened perceptibly every moment, yet still while the eastern
slope of every roof was jet black, the western slopes were bright, and
here and there at the distance the light turned and waned on upper
windows. Sleep was coming over the world, and eternal sleep had come for
Jerry Strann.
It did not seem possible.
Some night at sea, when clouds hurtled before the wind across the sky
and when the waves leaped up mast-high; when some good ship staggered
with the storm, when hundreds were shrieking and yelling in fear or
defiance of death; there would have been a death-scene for Jerry Strann.
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