dants, if he had any,
take umbrage at the matter--swore that he had not only seen the ghostly
steed pass Vauroque in the dead of night, but that it bore a rider whose
head was carried carefully in his right hand. Unfortunately, the
headless one passed so quickly that Nikki said he could not distinguish
his features--having looked for them first in the wrong place--and so he
could not say for certain who the next to die would be; but from the
knowing wag of his head the neighbours were of opinion that he knew more
than he chose to tell, and he gained quite a reputation thereby.

But, even here again, doubts were cast upon the matter by some,
especially those who were acquainted with the old gentleman's
proclivities towards raw spirits of the material kind that paid the
lightest of duties in Guernsey.

All these and very many similar matters were discussed by the
Doctor--who disturbed their minds with horrific accounts of homicidal
mania taking possession of apparently innocent souls--and the Senechal
and the Vicar and Stephen Gard, as they sat over their pipes of an
evening in the Doctor's house. But chiefly the great and troublesome
question of "Who?"

They were all of one mind that the matter must be looked into. The
feeling that a danger was loose in the Island, and might at any moment
fall upon any man, woman, or child, was past endurance. The suspicion
that It might be any one of those they met every day was insufferable.

The only difficulty was to decide how to look into it--what to do, and
how.

Each day they feared to hear of some new outrage. But until the
perpetrator was discovered they could do nothing towards his
suppression. And, on the other hand, it looked as though they could do
nothing towards his discovery until he perpetrated some new outrage.

It was Gard who suggested they should watch the Coupee every night,
armed, and unknown to any but themselves.

And, after much discussion, following out his idea, he and the Senechal
and the Doctor, who could bowl over a rabbit as well as any of them, lay
in the heather, on the common above the cutting on the Little Sark side,
for many nights, guns in hand, and eyes and ears on the strain, but saw
and heard nothing.

One night, indeed, when there was a high wind, the Doctor's marrow
crawled in his backbone at the sound of groanings and moanings and most
dolorous cries for help, coming up out of black Coupee Bay, where they
had picked up Tom Hamon's an