tain himself for pain. The author goes on
to relate that, for want of this third bite, she bore one dead child,
and two living. My own case," continued the Reverend William, "was
somewhat similar. Lydia's unrelieved babble reacted upon her bulk,
and awoke in me an absorbing, fascinating desire to strike her.
I longed to see her quiver. I fought against the feeling, stifled
it, trod it down: it awoke again. It filled my thoughts, my dreams;
it gnawed me like a vulture. A hundred times while she sat
complacently turning her inane periods, I had to hug my fist to my
breast, lest it should leap out and strike her senseless. Do I weary
you? Let me proceed:--

"That Sunday evening we sat, one on each side of the hearth, in the
Vicarage drawing-room. She was talking--talking; and I sat tapping
my foot and whispering to myself, 'You are too fat, Lydia, you are
too fat.' Her talk ran on the two sermons I had preached that day,
the dresses of the congregation, the expense of living, the parish
ailments--inexhaustible, trivial, relentless. Suddenly she looked up
and our eyes met. Her voice trailed off and dropped like a bird
wounded in full flight. She stood up and took a step towards me.
'Is anything the matter, William?' she asked solicitously. 'You are
too fat, my dear,' I answered, laughing, and struck her full in the
face with my fist.

"She did not quiver much--not half enough--but dropped like a
half-full sack on to the carpet. I caught up a candle and examined
her. Her neck was dislocated. She was quite dead."

The madman skipped up from his boulder, and looked at me with
indescribable cunning.

"I am so glad, sir," he said, "that you did not bleed when I struck
you; it was a great mercy. The sight of blood affects me--ah!" he
broke off with a subtle quiver and drew a long breath. "Do you know
the sands by Woeful Ness--the Twin Brothers?" he asked.

I knew that dreary headland well. For half a mile beyond the grey
Church and Vicarage of Bleakirk it extends, forming the northern arm
of the small fishing-bay, and protecting it from the full set of the
tides. Towards its end it breaks away sharply, and terminates in a
dorsal ridge of slate-coloured rock that runs out for some two
hundred feet between the sands we call the Twin Brothers. Of these,
that to the south, and inside the bay, is motionless, and bears the
name of the 'Dead-Boy;' but the 'Quick-Boy,' to the north, shifts
continually. It is