oor, and impaled a letter addressed, in a vile hand--

"TO JAK THRE TRADES."

Henry took hold of the handle to draw the knife out; but the formidable
weapon had been driven clean through the door with a single blow.

Then Henry drew back, and, as the confusion of surprise cleared away,
the whole thing began to grow on him, and reveal distinct and alarming
features.

The knife was not one which the town manufactured in the way of
business, it was a long, glittering blade, double-edged, finely pointed,
and exquisitely tempered. It was not a tool, but a weapon.

Why was it there, and, above all, how did it come there?

He distinctly remembered locking the door overnight. Indeed, he had
found it locked, and the window-shutters bolted; yet there was this
deadly weapon, and on its point a letter, the superscription of which
looked hostile and sinister.

He drew the note gently across the edge of the keen knife, and the paper
parted like a cobweb. He took it to the window and read it. It ran thus:

"This knifs wun of too made ekspres t'other is for thy hart if thou
doesnt harken Trade and leve Chetm. Is thy skin thicks dore thinks
thou if not turn up and back to Lundon or I cum again and rip thy ----
carkiss with feloe blade to this thou ---- cokny

"SLIPER JACK."

CHAPTER IV.

Any one who reads it by the fireside may smile at the incongruous
mixture of a sanguinary menace with bad spelling. But deeds of blood had
often followed these scrawls in Hillsborough, and Henry knew it: and,
indeed, he who can not spell his own name correctly is the very man to
take his neighbor's life without compunction; since mercy is a fruit of
knowledge, and cruelty of ignorance.

And then there was something truly chilling in the mysterious entrance
of this threat on a dagger's point into a room he had locked overnight.
It implied supernatural craft and power. After this, where could a man
be safe from these all-penetrating and remorseless agents of a secret
and irresponsible tribunal.

Henry sat down awhile, and pored over the sanguinary scrawl, and glanced
from it with a shudder at the glittering knife. And, while he was in
this state of temporary collapse, the works filled, the Power moved, the
sonorous grindstones revolved, and every man worked at his ease, except
one, the best of them all beyond comparison.

He went to his friend Bayne, and said in a broken voice, "They have put
me in heart for work; given me a