bout an hour before I started,
to sleep at our house'----

'Yes--yes,' gasped Dutton, white as death, and every fibre of his body
shaking with terrible dread. 'Yes--well, well, go on. Thunder and
lightning! out with it, will you?'

'Unfortunately, two female cousins arrived soon after you went away,
and I was obliged to escort Annie and Mrs Rivers home again.' A wild
shriek--yell is perhaps the more appropriate expression--burst from
the conscience and fear-stricken man. Another instant, and he had torn
his watch from the fob, glanced at it with dilated eyes, dashed it on
the table, and was rushing madly towards the door, vainly withstood by
Elsworthy, who feared we had gone too far.

'Out of the way!' screamed the madman. 'Let go, or I'll dash you to
atoms!' Suiting the action to the threat, he hurled my brother-in-law
against the wall with stunning force, and rushed on, shouting
incoherently: 'My horse! There is time yet! Tom Edwards, my horse!'

Tom Edwards was luckily at hand, and although mightily surprised at
the sudden uproar, which he attributed to Mr Dutton being in drink,
mechanically assisted to saddle, bridle, and bring out the roan mare;
and before I could reach the stables, Dutton's foot was in the
stirrup. I shouted 'Stop' as loudly as I could, but the excited
horseman did not heed, perhaps not hear me: and away he went, at a
tremendous speed, hatless, and his long gray-tinted hair streaming in
the wind. It was absolutely necessary to follow. I therefore directed
Elsworthy's horse, a much swifter and more peaceful animal than
Dutton's, to be brought out; and as soon as I got into the high
country road, I too dashed along at a rate much too headlong to be
altogether pleasant. The evening was clear and bright, and I now and
then caught a distant sight of Dutton, who was going at a frantic pace
across the country, and putting his horse at leaps that no man in his
senses would have attempted. I kept the high-road, and we had thus
ridden about half an hour perhaps, when a bright flame about a mile
distant, as the crow flies, shot suddenly forth, strongly relieved
against a mass of dark wood just beyond it. I knew it to be Dutton's
house, even without the confirmation given by the frenzied shout which
at the same moment arose on my left hand. It was from Dutton. His
horse had been _staked_, in an effort to clear a high fence, and he
was hurrying desperately along on foot. I tried to make him hear me,
or to