before the fifteen"
for damage to his credit. But I pointed out that nothing hurts a man's
credit so much as the habit of not paying his debts. Whereupon he
calmed a little, and said he, "I'll wager that it was old Hobby who put
you on to this!" To which, naturally, I made no reply, letting him
think just what he would.

At three o'clock I had Dapple saddled. For it being the winter season,
I judged that late enough to be travelling over so wild a country. But
having done harm to no one, and carrying no sums of money, I saw no
reason for fear.

At the half-way little hedge inn, for once in my life I lighted down
and called for a bowl of soup, but could only get coffee, and that
without milk--which proves the improvidence of these people. For Crewe
Moss would easily have pastured a hundred cows, though it would most
likely happen that an odd one might get laired in the soft places now
and then. But not to have so much as a drop of milk and on Crewe Moss!
Lamentable! So I told the people what I thought of them, mounted
Dapple, and came my ways.

I had gone, perhaps, three miles, and was skirting the woods adjoining
the property of Mr. Stennis, when, as I passed under some high trees a
noose dropped about my neck. The mare passed on, and I was left
dangling as neatly as if the hangman had done it. Happily for me the
cord had descended lower than my neck on one side, and I was caught
under the left armpit. But there I swung and turned all the same,
shouting manfully for help. I could observe as I wheeled about, for
all the world like a scarecrow in a bean field, some one in the act of
catching Dapple and tying her to a tree.

Then the man--a long-limbed, ugly-mugged fellow, with corkscrew curls
exactly like the old maids when I was young--came back, and, letting me
down, wrapped me carefully in a coil of rope till I could move neither
hand nor foot. I know him now to be Mad Jeremy, for long chief agent
in the doubtful affairs of Mr. Hobby Stennis.

Now I am a fair weight, for my inches, though not to call a heavy man.
But this gipsy-looking fellow took me on his back as easily as if I had
been a bag of shavings for kindling. If he had taken to honest
courses, that same Jeremy Orrin--for so I am informed he is called--I
would gladly have given him a thirty-shilling-a-week job in the
warehouse. Nothing would have come unhandily to him.

Well, he carried me by various passages, the rough stone and lime of