e put to him. It was indeed
strange to see how, with every interview, the Captain grew fiercer and
fiercer and sharper and sharper. He made no allusions now to "'is
little nipper," said nothing about that holy soul his mother, and never
mentioned his liking for Jeremy. There was evidently something on his
mind, and if he had seemed mysterious at their first meeting it was
nothing to the secrecy that he practised now.

And yet, in spite of all this, his hold over Jeremy grew and grew. That
dream of the bending white road was always with Jeremy. He could think
of nothing but the Captain, and while he was certainly afraid and would
jump at the slightest sound, he was also certainly excited beyond all
earlier experience. He longed, as he lay awake at night, to see the
Captain. He seemed to have always in front of his eyes the great wall of
a chest with the blue ship on it, and the bolster legs, and the gigantic
hands. Strangest of all was the sense of evil that came with the
attraction.

He longed to be in the man's company as he longed to do something that
he had been always told not to do, and when he caught sight of him
a sudden, hot, choking hand was pressed upon his heart, and he was
terrified, delighted, frightened, ashamed, all in one. The Captain
always alluded to the things that he would tell him, would show him
one day--"When you come to my little place I'll teach yer a thing or
two"--and Jeremy would wonder for hours what this little place would
be like and what the Captain would teach him. Meanwhile, he saw him
everywhere, even when he was not there--behind lamp-posts, at street
corners, behind the old woman's umbrella in the market-place, peering
round the statues in the Cathedral, jerking up his head from behind
chimney pots, looking through the nursery windows just when dusk was
coming on, in the passages, under stairs, out in the dark garden--and
always behind him that horrid dream of the dead-white road and the
shingly Cove... Yes, poor Jeremy was truly haunted.

IV

That Miss Jones suspected nothing of these meetings must be attributed
partly to that lady's habit of wrapping herself in her own thoughts on
her walks abroad, and partly to her natural short-sightedness. Once
Mary said that she had noticed "a horrid man with a red face" staring
at them; but Miss Jones, although she was not a vain woman, thought
it nevertheless quite natural that men should stare, and fancied more
frequently that t