ed.
I made no pretence of eating the supper which had been prepared, neither
did I speak to Eli, who looked at me pityingly; and I saw that tears
dropped from his strange-looking, cross eyes, and rolled down his ugly,
misshapen face.

All hope had now gone from me; I felt I had no desire to win back my
own, or even to live. My life had more and more become bound up in that
of Naomi Penryn, until now, when I could no longer comfort myself with
the hope that she lived, nothing was of value to me.

"Eli," I said, presently, "you had better go to bed. You will need all
your strength."

"Why, Maaster Jasper?"

"Because to-morrow I shall go with you back to St. Eve."

"And what then, Maaster Jasper?"

"I do not know," I said; "it does not matter what becomes of me now."

"And why, Maaster Jasper? Poor little Eli do love 'ee, love 'ee
deearly."

"But my love is dead," I answered; and then I told him what the priest
had told me.

His cross eyes shone brightly, and his mouth began to move just as I had
seen his mother's move many times.

"I've found out things," he said, cunningly; "mawther 'ave tould me, I
c'n vind out ef she's dead; ef she es, I c'n bring 'er back. Zay I
shall, Maaster Jasper, 'n little Eli 'll do et."

"No," I cried, with a shudder; "Naomi, who is as pure as the angels of
God, shall never be influenced by the powers of darkness."

At first I thought he was going to say some angry words, but he only
fondled my hands and murmured loving words to me just as a mother
murmurs to a tired or sick child.

"Poor Maaster Jasper, dear Maaster Jasper," then he went to bed,
leaving me alone.

The landlady of the kiddleywink was a kind and motherly soul, and
treated me with much sympathy, for she saw I was in trouble, and when I
told her that I should not go to the bedroom with Eli, she prepared a
bed for me on the window-seat, and left a candle burning for me.

But I could not sleep; when all the inn was quiet I went out into the
night, and wandered around the old Manor House like a man bereft of his
senses, as indeed I was. I found my way into the churchyard, and roamed
among the grave-stones, wondering all the time where Naomi's grave was,
and why the death of one who possessed so much property was so little
thought of. Perhaps I stayed here two hours, and all the time I grew
more and more fearful. It seemed to me that the dead were arising from
their graves and denouncing me for disturbing them, whi