lived across the
road) declare to have been Satan himself; they have assured me
so again and again, and I cannot shake their belief. But that is
nonsense. The man was a grizzled artizan looking fellow well over
fifty; extraordinarily like the old Thatcher, though darker of
skin--yellow as a guinea, said Gantick; in fact and beyond doubt, the
old man's son. He made no friends, no acquaintances ever, but confined
himself to nursing the Thatcher, now tied to his chair by rheumatism.
One thing alone gives colour to the Jagos' belief; the Thatcher who
had sent for him could not abide the sight of him. The Jago children,
who snatched a fearful joy by stealing after dark into the unkempt
garden and peering through the uncurtained lattice windows, reported
that as the pair sat at table with the black bottle between them, the
Thatcher's eyes would be drawn to fix themselves on the other's with a
stealthy shrinking terror--or, as they put it, "vicious when he wasna'
lookin' and afeared when he was."

They would sit (so the children reported) half an hour, or maybe an
hour, at a time, without a word spoken between them; but, indeed, the
yellow stranger troubled few with his speech. His only visits were
paid to the postmistress, who kept a small grocery store, where he
bought arrowroot and other spoon-food for the invalid, and the Ring of
Bells, where he went nightly to have the black bottle refilled with
rum. On the doctor he never called.

It was on July 12th that the end came. The fine weather, after lasting
for six weeks, had broken up two days before into light thunderstorms,
which did not clear the air as usual. Ky Jago (short for Caiaphas),
across the way, prophesied a big thunderstorm to come, but allowed he
might be mistaken when on the morning of the 12th the rain came down
in sheets. This torrential rain lasted until two in the afternoon,
when the sky cleared and a pleasant northwesterly draught played up
the valley. At six o'clock Ky Jago, who, in default of the Thatcher,
was making shift to cover up Farmer Sprague's ricks, observed dense
clouds massing themselves over the sea and rolling up slowly against
the wind, and decided that the big storm would happen after all. At
nine in the evening it broke.

It broke with such fury that the Stranger, with the black bottle under
his arm, paused on the threshold as much as to ask his father, "Shall
I go?" But the old man was clamouring for drink, and he went. He was
half-w