The men puffed uneasily at their pipes, not one of which was alight, and avoided the stranger's eye, which rested on each in turn with a sardonic humour.
Prudy lit the candles, one from the other, and after snuffing them with her fingers that they might burn steadily, arranged them in a row on the mantelshelf.

Now above this shelf the chimney-piece was panelled to the height of some two and a half feet, and along the panel certain ballads that Prudy had purchased of the Sherborne messenger were stuck in a row with pins.
"Better take those ballads down, if you value them," the stranger remarked.
She turned round inquiringly.
"I'm going to shoot." "Sakes alive--an' my panel, an' my best brass candlesticks!" "Take them down." She gave in, and unpinned the ballads.
"Now stand aside." He stepped back to the other side of the room, and set his back to the door.
"Don't move," he said to Calvin Oke, whose chair stood immediately under the line of fire, "your head is not the least in the way.

And don't turn it either, but keep your eye on the candle to the right." This was spoken in the friendliest manner, but it hardly reassured Oke, who would have preferred to keep his eye on the deadly weapon now being lifted behind his back.

Nevertheless he did not disobey, but sat still, with his eyes fixed on the mantelshelf, and only his shoulders twitching to betray his discomposure.
_Bang!_ The room was suddenly full of sound, then of smoke and the reek of gunpowder.

As the noise broke on their ears one of the candles went out quietly.