ng head, and an arm uplifted to strike, with something glittering
in it like a crescent moon.

There was no time for defence. There was no time for escape. The
Thing, beast, or man--more beast-like now than human--was upon me and
bore me down. But even while the danger was in the air, I heard a
sound which appeared to me not at all like a shot--more like a spit of
fire when a log sparks on the hearth. And in a moment I was prone on
my face, bruised and beaten down by the weight. I heard a jangle of
steel. I supposed that I was wounded--that this was the end. And with
the Thing heavy on the top of me, I fainted away.

CHAPTER XL

WANTED--A PENNY IN THE SLOT

When I came to myself the moon had risen--risen good and high, too--for
it showed well above the orchard wall where it was broken, and over the
palisades with which Hobby Stennis had mended it with his own hand.

Elsie was seated by me. She had opened up my coat, and undone my
waistcoat and shirt at the neck. There was a pleasant coolness, and
she was slopping about with a wet handkerchief--not very big, indeed,
being one of her own, and better adapted for dabbing dry girls' eyes,
than for recovering a man out of a faint.

I sat up.

"How did you come here?" I said.

"How did you?" she answered, very shortly; "lie still!"

"Shan't!"

"Still in the sulks?"

"I say, Elsie, what was _that_?"

"What?"

I was looking all about, you may be sure, and a little way off under
the shadow of the great broken-down gates of the orchard, I saw a heap
lie darkly, curiously loose and stretched out, a kind of wisp in the
form of a man, something like a Guy Fawkes dragged through water
instead of fire.

I pointed to it. The head, to my eyes at least, still glowed faintly
phosphorescent.

"_That!_" I said briefly.

"That," said Elsie calmly, "is Mad Jeremy!"

I started up on my elbow in great astonishment.

"Then he wasn't dead after all, when he jumped into the water from the
top of the tower the morning of the burning?"

"It seems not--it was only a little habit of his," said Elsie calmly,
"but he is now! _I_ killed him."

"Why?"

"Because he would have killed you, if I had not! He was waiting for
you to pass. Only, as it happened, I had been waiting longest. I knew
you were in the sulks, and came to find you. Besides--he killed my
grandfather."

"But your grandfather----"

"No matter--he _was_ my grandfather!"

"And what did you