Morin, producing a gun from behind his back, pointed it at Courthope, and madam, holding the lamp, squared up behind her husband with the courage of desperation.
It was not this fantastic couple that checked Courthope's downward rush, but Madge's voice.
'Keep still!' she cried, in short strong accents of command.
Eliz, becoming aware of his movement, shrieked again.
Courthope, now defiant and angry, turned towards Madge, but, even as he waited to hear what she had to say, reflected that her interest could not suffer much by delay, for the thief, if he escaped, could make but small speed in the drifting storm over roads which led to no near place of escape or hiding.
It was the judge's daughter which Courthope now saw in Madge--the desire to estimate evidence, the fearless judgment.
'We took you in last night, a stranger; and now we have been robbed, which never happened before in all our lives.

My sister says it was you she saw in our room.

As soon as I could get the candle lit I found you here, and Jacques Morin says that you have opened your window so that you would be able to escape at once.

What is the use of saying that you are not a robber ?' He made another defiant statement of his own version of the story.
The girl had given some command in French to Morin; to Courthope she spoke again in hasty sentences, reiterating the evidence against him.
Her manner was a little different now--it had not the same straightforward air of command.

He began to hope that he might persuade her, and then discovered suddenly that she had been deliberately riveting his attention while the command which he had not understood was being obeyed.