"with this stone you sought my death, and with
it I cause yours."

Then he knelt where she lay motionless, extended, in the marsh,
half out of the water, half submerged.

He gripped her by the throat, and by sheer force, with his one
available arm, thrust her head under water.

The moonlight played in the ripples as they closed over her face;
it surely was not water, but liquid silver, fluid diamond.

He endeavored to hold her head under the surface. She did not
struggle. She did not even move. But suddenly a pang shot through
him, as though he had been pierced by another bullet. The bandage
about his wound gave way, and the hot blood broke forth again.

Jonas reeled back in terror, lest his consciousness should desert
him, and he sank for an instant insensible, face foremost, into
the water.

As it was, where he knelt, among the water-plants, they were
yielding under his weight.

He scrambled away, and clung to a distorted pine on the summit of
a sand-knoll.

Giddy and faint, he laid his head against the bush, and inhaled
the invigorating odor of the turpentine. Gradually he recovered,
and was able to stand unsupported.

Then he looked in the direction where Mehetabel lay. She had not
stirred. The bare white arms were exposed and gleaming in the
moonlight. The face he did not see. He shrank from looking towards
it.

Then he slunk away, homewards.

CHAPTER XXV.

AN APPARITION.

When Bideabout arrived in the Punch-Bowl, as he passed the house
of the Rocliffes, he saw his sister, with a pail, coming from the
cow-house. One of the cattle was ill, and she had been carrying
it a bran-mash.

He went to her, and said, "Sally!"

"Here I be, Jonas, what now?"

"I want you badly at my place. There's been an accident."

"What? To whom? Not to old Clutch?"

"Old Clutch be bothered. It is I be hurted terr'ble bad. In my arm.
If it weren't dark here, under the trees, you'd see the blood."

"I'll come direct. That's just about it. When she's wanted, your
wife is elsewhere. When she ain't, she's all over the shop. I'll
clap down the pail inside. You go on and I'll follow."

Jonas unlocked his house, and entered. He groped about for the
tinder-box, but when he had found it was unable to strike a light
with one hand only. He seated himself in the dark, and fell into
a cold sweat.

Not only was he in great pain, but his mind was ill at ease, full
of vague terrors. There was something in the corner t