s ear, "unless you can find a
pistol, and be ready to shoot," and she pushed him within the door
again.

She stood as before, in an even line with the red bull's-eye of the
stove, and listened; there was still a scraping of feet and muttering
of voices outside, but not so near the door, and she wondered if the
enemy were going round the cabin to attack it from another side.
Suddenly a shot rang out in the stillness outside, then another, and the
ball came through the window behind her and passed over her shoulder;
there seemed to be a rush and stampede towards the door. She turned and
faced it, raising both revolvers, and as she heard the wood of the
fallen door split under the trampling feet, her fingers had almost drawn
the triggers to welcome the incomers, when out of that cold blackness
beyond the door came a slight cough. Katrine's hand dropped to her side,
a sick, cold horror came over her as she realised what she would have
done in the next instant. That was Talbot's cough. One second more of
silence, one more step forward, and her shot would have found his heart.
She reeled where she stood, against the wall, with the sickness of the
thought. She could not shoot again now: he was there outside amongst
them--and Stephen, was he there too, or inside? Talbot, she supposed,
roused by the noise, had come out and attacked them between the two
cabins. Then what she had said to Stephen recurred to her. Suppose he
had searched and found a gun, and should come out from the inner room,
he would not count upon Talbot's presence any more than she had done; he
would naturally shoot at the first who crossed the threshold, as she
herself had done; he would shoot in the dark, by her orders. The
thoughts flashed quicker than lightning through her brain. The horror of
the situation, this uncertainty, this killing blindly in the confusion
and the darkness, was too great to be borne. The danger now was greater
than even the light could bring. She dropped the pistols on to a stool
beside her, drew a match from her pocket, and heedless of the perfect
mark she herself offered now, struck it and held it over her head. In a
second, the body across the hearth, the wrecked door, and two pale faces
looking in at her from the opening, leaped into sight; the enemies, the
living ones, were gone. A pool of blood beyond the threshold, and blood
on the splintered wood, and their dead companion, only remained. For a
moment the three faces, all pale