Brom Common or go
the way that we had always taken--Joe and I--on our expeditions and
researches.

All the way Miss Orrin talked incessantly of my grandfather, of how
that he had been like a saviour to her poor sisters and herself,
receiving them when they would have been shut up in an asylum, and of a
certainty would have died there. She spoke also of his kindness to
herself.

"They call him the Golden Farmer," she said. "And of a truth that is
what he has been to us, for his heart is of pure gold."

I ventured to suggest that the folk of the countryside held a very
different opinion of Mr. Stennis. But I could not have made a more
unfortunate remark. In a moment the fire of madness flashed up from
her eyes. The colour fled her lips. Her fingers twitched as if drawn
by wires. She was again the mad woman I had seen leading the
procession of the little coffins. "The folk of the countryside!" she
screamed. "Ranging bears, wild beasts of the field! Oh, I could tear
them to pieces! Gangs of evil beasts, slow bellies, coming here
roaring and mouthing, trampling my lily beds, uprooting everything,
laying waste the labour of years. Oh, I would slay them with my
hands--yes, root out and destroy, even as Sodom and as Gomorrah!"

And suddenly lifting up her hands with the action of a prophetess
inspired, she chanted--

O daughter of Babylon,
Near to destruction,
Bless'd shall he be that thee rewards
As thou to us hast done.

Yea, happy, surely, shall he be,
Thy tender little ones,
Who shall lay hold upon, and them
Shall dash against the stones.

I trembled, as well I might, at the fury I had unwittingly kindled.

We were now in the woods, the main travelled road far behind us, a
complexity of paths and rabbit tracks all about, and before us a green
walk, dark and clammy, upon which the snow had hardly yet laid hold.
On one side rose up the wall of an ancient orchard, which they said had
been planted and built about by the monks of old. On the other was the
moat, still frozen, only divided from us by an evergreen fence,
untrimmed, thick, and high, probably contemporary with the orchard.

Suddenly, at the entrance to this green tunnel, Aphra Orrin turned and
grasped me by both wrists. Her face, as it glowered down at me, had
become as the face of a fiend seen fresh from the place of the Nether
Hate.

"Jeremy, Jeremy!" she cried. And at the sound of her voice it came to
me th