of a tree, the branches bending down
umbrella fashion all about me. In those days I was a limber young
fellow enough, and could have acted model for an illustrated-paper hero
quite fairly--Childe Harold, the Master of Ravenswood, or one of those
young Douglases to whom they brought in the Black Bull's Head in the
Castle of Edinburgh, as a sign that they must die.

Of course, I had no business to be there at that time of night, but my
own loneliness and Elsie's desertion made me stay on and on--miserable
and cherishing my misery, petting my "sulks," and swearing to myself
that I would never, _never_ give in--_never_ forgive Elsie, _never_
return to those who had so ill used and misunderstood me.

Yes, what a fool, if you like! But I wasn't the first and I won't be
the last to feel and say just the same things.

Then, quick and chillish, like the breaking of cold sweat on a man,
though he doesn't know quite why, there passed over me the thrill which
tells a fellow that he is not alone. Yet anything more lonely than the
Moat Pond ruins, with what remained of the square hulk of the tower
cutting the sky--the same from which Jeremy had hurled himself--could
not be imagined.

Nevertheless I did not breathe that night air alone. I was sure of
that. The bats swooped and recovered, seeing doubtless the white blur
of my face in the dusk of the tree shadows.

Before me I could see the green lawn all trampled that had been Miss
Orrin's pride. The lilies were mostly uprooted to allow of the
perquisitions of the law. But whether it was something supernatural
(in which at the time I was quite in a mood to believe), or merely
owing to the moving of a soil so pregnant with the exhalations of the
marsh--certain it is that I saw the distinct outline of a man's body,
with limbs extended, lie in the same place where each of Miser Hobby's
"cases" had been interred. They were marked out with a kind of misty
fire, like the phosphorus when a damp match won't strike--not bright
like the boiling swirl in a vessel's wake. Each of them kept quite
still. There was no movement save, perhaps, that of a star, when you
see it through the misty air low on the horizon of the west, and kind
of swaying, which after all may only have been in my head.

I don't think I was particularly frightened at first. I had had some
chemistry lessons with Mr. Ablethorpe, and we had gone pretty far
on--boiling a penny in one kind of acid, and making limes