n a piece of
white rag.

"Hello, Johnnie! What's the matter with Marielihou?" asked Graeme. And
Marielihou turned her malevolent yellow-green eyes on him and looked
curses.

"Goderabetin! She've got hurt."

"Oh! How was that?"

"I d'n know. Wisht I knowed who done it;" and just then, as luck would
have it, old Tom Hamon came sauntering along in the gloaming, smoking
a contemplative pipe with long slow puffs.

And at sight of him Marielihou ruffled and swelled to twice her size,
and raked up most horrible and blood-curdling oaths from away down in
her inside into her black throat, and spat them out at him, as he came
up, in a fusillade that sounded like ripraps, and her eyes flamed
baleful fires.

"Cuss away, y'ould witch!" said old Tom, with a grin through his
pipe-stem. "How's the leg?" and Marielihou with a final volley
disappeared among the bushes, and Johnnie crawled after her.

"What on earth does he mean?" whispered Meg.

"Mr. Hamon has an idea that Marielihou and old Mme. Vautrin have
something in common. In fact I believe he goes so far as to say that
they are one and the same. Black magic, you know,--witchcraft, and all
that kind of thing."

"How horrid!"

"B'en!" chuckled old Tom again. "You find out how 'tis with th' old
witch. We know how 'tis with Marrlyou. 'Twere the silver bullet did
it. If sh' 'adn't jumped 'twould ha' gone through 'er 'ead," and he
went off chuckling through his pipe-stem.

And the next evening, as they were sauntering slowly through the
darkening lanes to the windmill, to see the life-lights flash out all
round the horizon, it happened that they met the doctor just turning
out of his gate.

"Hello, doctor! How's old Mme. Vautrin to-day?" asked Graeme.

"She's going on all right," said the doctor, with a touch of surprise.
"There seems a quite unusual amount of interest in that old lady all
of a sudden. How is it?"

"What is it's wrong with her?"

And the doctor eyed him curiously for a moment, and then said, "Well,
she says she hurt her leg ormering, slipped on a rock and got the hook
in it. But--Well, it's a bad leg anyway, and she won't go ormering or
anything else for a good long time to come."

Which matter, in the light of old Tom Hamon's silver bullets and
evident knowledge of Marielihou's injury, left them all very much
puzzled, though, as Graeme acknowledged, there might be nothing in it
after all.

V

It was just after the second lesson, the follow