at of a certainty I had fallen into a trap. This was not the road
to the House of Deep Moat. I ought to have known better. I had been
drawn hither solely to be murdered. I tried to scream, but could not.
As in a dream, when one is chased by terrible things out of the
Unknown, speech left me. I felt my knees weaken. And, indeed, had I
been as strong as ever I was in my life, of what use would my strength
have been? For there, at the entrance of the green tunnel, stood Mad
Jeremy, smiling and licking his lips.

Meantime Aphra Orrin held me, shaking me to and fro as a terrier might
a rat. She was as strong as most men--stronger, indeed, with the
madness that was in her.

"Slay the daughter of Babylon! Slay her! Slay, and spare not!" she
cried.

And while I stood thus, trembling violently, with that dreadful woman
gripping my wrists so that she hurt them, Jeremy came leisurely up with
his hands in his pockets--sauntering is the word that will best express
it. He bent down and looked at me. For he was very tall. And I
looked up at him with, I dare say, wide and terrified eyes. How
indeed, could they be otherwise?

"Where is your knife?" cried Aphra Orrin. "Quick! Make an end--do as
with the others! This is the last seed of iniquity. She will take
from us our riches--all that should be ours--hard earned, suffered for,
all that lies under the green turf--all you have won, Jeremy, and I
have paid for twice over with weary nights of penance. That old man
would steal it from us, from us who gained it for him, to give it all
to this pretty china doll he calls his granddaughter!"

Had it been the will of Aphra Orrin at that moment, the opportunity
would have been wanting for me to fill this copybook with these notes,
to pass the weary time. For she loosened one hand, and snatched at the
knife in Mad Jeremy's belt--the same we had once seen in his teeth when
he swam the Deep Moat to get at Joe and me.

But happily, or so it appeared at the time, Mad Jeremy was in another
humour. He thrust his sister off, and, as it seemed, with the lightest
jerk of one hand he took me out of her clutches.

"Na, na," he said; "this dainty queen is far ower bonnie for a man like
me to be puttin' the knife into as if she were a yearling grice. The
knife for the lads that winna pay the ransom, if ye like. But a bonnie
lass, and the heiress to a' the riches at the Grange--auld Hobby's
hoards--I tell ye, her and me will do f