den bridge, not liking the
noise, as horses are wont to do on gangways of ships and when they lead
them into trucks at railway stations.

In another minute Elsie and I stood within the Moat. And turning
round, what was my horror to see the bridge rising slowly into the air
behind me, and in a little house at the side, bent double over a wheel,
I caught sight of the "mounster," Jeremy Orrin, with a grin on his face
and all his dark ringlets shaking and dancing.

As we went past he set his head out and called these words after us:

"Rats in a trap!" he cried, "rats in a trap!"

And I can tell you that I for one felt just as he said.

But Elsie followed her grandfather step for step and took no notice.
You would have thought she was the crowned queen of the place.

CHAPTER VII

FAMILY DISCIPLINE

As nobody had seen Deep Moat Grange since it had been taken over by Mr.
Hobby Stennis and the crew he had gathered about him, it may be as well
to describe it as I saw it--now that it is swept from off the face of
the earth.

The old, many-gabled, brick-built house was ivy-covered--in poor
repair, but clean. Curious-looking, stocking-shaped contrivances
cowled the chimneys, or such of them as were used. The Grange was set
so deep in the woods that when the wind blew with any violence, and
apparently from any quarter, it raced and gusted and whirled down the
chimneys so as to blow the faggots out on the hearths.

But without and within the house, it was anything but dirty. That is,
so far as I--no great judge, mayhap--could make out. At times Jeremy
Orrin, who now followed us, laughing and jeering, could work like a
demon, clearing up some debris. And Mr. Stennis kept poking his nose
here and there into the outhouses and cart sheds with a curious,
dithering thrill of apprehension, not at all like a master coming back
to his own house, or looking if his servants' work were well performed.
Still, if he looked for dirt, he found none. No, nor anything
else--except in the great barn, empty of everything (for the horse's
oats and bedding were kept in the stable). Here Mr. Stennis, tripping
along with his tread of a frightened hen, lifted a huge curtain of corn
sacks, thick and heavy, made after the pattern of those at church doors
abroad, and we went in.

As soon as we stood on the beaten floor of hard earth, we could not
take our eyes from what we beheld at the upper end. There was a kind
of altar, rudely s