e bride he will hae into the bargain. Come your ways,
hinny--come your ways!"

He spoke to me with a curious, caressing voice, bowing low like a
dancing master, with his broad bonnet in his hand, and making all sorts
of ludicrous gestures to prove that I would be safe with him.

I did not know what to do. From the woman I had nothing to expect but
a knife at my throat, and yet to accompany Mad Jeremy! That I could
not do.

Suddenly I screamed aloud at the top of my voice, hoping that some one
would hear me and come to my assistance. But Mad Jeremy only put his
arm about me and covered my mouth with one great hairy paw.

"Gently then, lass--nane o' that, noo! It wanna do," he said, not
angrily at all, but rather like one soothing an infant; "ye see there's
nae workers in the fields thae winter days. And if there were hail
armies, they wad kep wide o' the Deep Moat Wood, for they hae seen
Jeremy gang in there a gye wheen times--ech, aye!"

And picking me up in his arms as easily as a babe, Mad Jeremy carried
me into an ivy-covered ruin, and after that all was a labyrinth of
passages and tunnels till I found myself in the place where I wrote
these notes.

CHAPTER XXIII

WITHIN THE MONKS' OVEN

The chamber into which Jeremy led me was small, but it had evidently
been used for a sleeping-room before. A couch was placed in the
corner. There were chairs and even a table. But I saw at the first
glance that the window, placed high in the vaulted roof, was unglazed,
but barred.

"It is not precisely a palace, so to speak," said Jeremy, shaking his
long snaky curls, and smiling his unctuous thin-lipped smile; "but in
comparison wi' some--mercy me, but ye should be content. Ye will be
braw and warm here. This was never aught but a cosy corner--see,
bonnie lass! There's the auld monks' wark--the oven where they baked
their pies!"

And taking my hand in his great one he slapped the wall which ended my
prison vault, cutting it, as it were, into two parts. It was, in fact,
quite as warm as the fingers could bear, and most of the time since has
kept an equal temperature--though, if anything, a little stifling on
baking days.

"Here ye shall bide," said Jeremy, standing dark and lithe in the
doorway; "I myself shall be your keeper, but think not but that Jeremy
Orrin kens bravely how to behave himself to a leddy. Ye will wait
here, sacred as St. Theresa, till the wedding gown is prepared and the
table