scovy drinks me down a quartern
of aqua vitae at a gulp,--I've seen him do it....I would I were the
Bacchus on this cup, with the purple grapes adangle above me.... Wine
and women--wine and women... good wine needs no bush... good sherris
sack"... His voice died into unintelligible mutterings, and his gray
unreverend head sank upon the table.

I rose, leaving him to his drunken slumbers, and, bowing to my lord,
took my leave. My lord followed me down to the public room below. A
party of upriver planters had been drinking, and a bit of chalk lay upon
a settle behind the door upon which the landlord had marked their score.
I passed it; then turned back and picked it up. "How long a line shall I
draw, my lord?" I asked with a smile.

"How does the length of the door strike you?" he answered.

I drew the chalk from top to bottom of the wood. "A heavy Core makes a
heavy reckoning, my lord," I said, and, leaving the mark upon the door,
I bowed again and went out into the street.

The sun was sinking when I reached the minister's house, and going into
the great room drew a stool to the table and sat down to think. Mistress
Percy was in her own chamber; in the room overhead the minister paced up
and down, humming a psalm. A fire was burning briskly upon the hearth,
and the red light rose and fell,--now brightening all the room, now
leaving it to the gathering dusk. Through the door, which I had left
open, came the odor of the pines, the fallen leaves, and the damp earth.
In the churchyard an owl hooted, and the murmur of the river was louder
than usual.

I had sat staring at the table before me for perhaps half an hour, when
I chanced to raise my eyes to the opposite wall. Now, on this wall,
reflecting the firelight and the open door behind me, hung a small
Venetian mirror, which I had bought from a number of such toys brought
in by the Southampton, and had given to Mistress Percy. My eyes rested
upon it, idly at first, then closely enough as I saw within it a man
enter the room. I had heard no footfall; there was no noise now behind
me. The fire was somewhat sunken, and the room was almost in darkness;
I saw him in the glass dimly, as shadow rather than substance. But the
light was not so faint that the mirror could not show me the raised
hand and the dagger within its grasp. I sat without motion, watching
the figure in the glass grow larger. When it was nearly upon me, and the
hand with the dagger drawn back for the blow