eapt on me like a cat from behind. I felt a hideous blow on
the nape of the neck: a jagged flame leapt up: the sunshine turned to
blood--then to darkness. With hands spread out, I stumbled blindly
forward and fell at full length into the beck.

When my senses returned, I became aware, first that I was lying,
bound hand and foot and securely gagged, upon the turf; secondly,
that the horses were still tethered, and standing quietly at the
foot-bridge; and, thirdly, that my companion had resumed his position
on the boulder, and there sat watching my recovery.

Seeing my eyes open, he raised his hat and addressed me in tones of
grave punctilio.

"Believe me, sir, I am earnest in my regret for this state of things.
Nothing but the severest necessity could have persuaded me to knock
the son of my late esteemed friend over the skull and gag his
utterance with a stone--to pass over the fact that it fairly lays my
sense of your hospitality under suspicion. Upon my word, sir, it
places me in a cursedly equivocal position!"

He took a pinch of snuff, absorbed it slowly, and pursued.

"It was necessary, however. You will partly grasp the situation when
I tell you that my name is Teague--the Reverend William Teague,
Doctor of Divinity, and formerly incumbent of Bleakirk-on-Sands."

His words explained much, though not everything. The circumstances
which led to the Reverend William's departure from Bleakirk had
happened some two years before my birth: but they were startling
enough to supply talk in that dull fishing village for many a long
day. In my nursery I had heard the tale that my companion's name
recalled: and if till now I had felt humiliation, henceforth I felt
absolute fear, for I knew that I had to deal with a madman.

"I perceive by your eyes, sir," he went on, "that with a part of my
story you are already familiar: the rest I am about to tell you.
It will be within your knowledge that late on a Sunday night, just
twenty-nine years ago, my wife left the Vicarage-house, Bleakirk, and
never returned; that subsequent inquiry yielded no trace of her
flight, beyond the fact that she went provided with a small hand-bag
containing a change of clothing; that, as we had lived together for
twenty years in the entirest harmony, no reason could then, or
afterwards, be given for her astonishing conduct. Moreover, you will
be aware that its effect upon me was tragical; that my lively
emotions underneath the shock deep