A shrill cackling--he could not make out the words. And since patience was not the first of Donnegan's virtues, he seized on the knob of the door and deliberately pressed it wide. Standing in the hall, now, and closing the door slowly behind him, he saw a woman with old, keen eyes shrinking away toward the staircase. She was evidently in great fear, but there was something infinitely malicious in the manner in which she kept working her lips soundlessly. She was shrinking, and half turned away, yet there was a suggestion that in an instant she might whirl and fly at his face. The door now clicked, and with the windstorm shut away Donnegan had a queer feeling of being trapped. "Now call the man of the house," he repeated. "See if I can't come to terms with him." "He'd make short work of you if he came," she replied. She broke into a shrill laughter, and Donnegan thought he had never seen a face so ugly. "If he came," she said, "you'd rue the day." "Well, I'll talk to you, then. I'm not asking charity. I want to pay for what I get." "This ain't a hotel. You go on down the road. Inside eight miles you'll come to the town." "Eight miles!" "That's nothing for a man to ride." "Not at all, if I had something to ride." "You ain't got a horse?" "No." "Then how do you come here?" "I walked." If this sharpened her suspicions, it sharpened her fear also. She put one foot on the lowest step of the stairs. "Be off with you, Mr. Donnegally, or whatever your outlandish name is. You'll get nothing here. What brings you--" A door closed and a footstep sounded lightly on the floor above. And Donnegan, already alert in the strange atmosphere of this house, gave back a pace so as to get an honest wall behind him. He noted that the step was quick and small, and preparing himself to meet a wisp of manhood--which, for that matter, was the type he was most inclined to fear--Donnegan kept a corner glance upon the old woman at the foot of the stairs and steadily surveyed the shadows at the head of the rise.