d no word had been spoken.

Eyelids, with his lashless lids (hence his sobriquet) half-closed,
squatted on the floor, Indian fashion, directing his pipe to his mouth
with uncertain hand. The other hand fumbled continually in his
breast, as if he kept something hidden there. Granger wondered what it
was.

Beorn sprawled his great length of legs along the shelf, his back and
head resting against the wall. His eyes were very bright, and a long
and ugly scar, which extended from the right of his forehead to his
lower jaw, and which Granger did not remember to have noticed before,
showed swollen and red through the tangled mass of his grey beard. His
pipe also was in his mouth, but his hand was still steady. Under the
influence of drink a new intentness had come into his face, all his
features seemed to be more keen and pointed. Every now and again he
would remove his pipe, as if he were about to break into speech; then,
either through laziness or from the tyranny of his habitual caution,
he would replace it and, as it seemed to Granger, relapse into
memories. He watched him closely, and he thought he saw the elation of
old successes, and emotions of forgotten defeats, flit across his
countenance. Granger himself was quite sober, having only pretended to
drink; if he sat a trifle huddled on his box and lurched unsteadily,
it was only that he might keep his companions unsuspicious.

On the crazy little stool between them stood a candle from which the
wax occasionally dripped, so that for a moment the flame would die
down, causing the shadows to shorten. A jam-jar did service as a
tumbler; there was one between the three of them, which meant that
they had to drink quickly in order not to keep the next man waiting.
Granger served out the whisky, and he served it neat--when men are
intent on getting drunk they do not procrastinate by adding water.

Eyelids was getting more and more peaceful and foolish, smiling first
to himself and then slily to Granger, as though he had some very happy
knowledge which he was burning to communicate. At last he pulled out
his hand from his shirt, and there was something in it. Beorn, raised
three feet from the floor on his shelf, could not see what his son was
doing, nor did he care; he was reliving the past, when there was no
Eyelids.

But Granger watched; the fingers opened a trifle and revealed the
shining of something yellow. Quick as thought, before the fingers
could close over it agai