he's a wonderful
carpenter and mechanic. You must really see the burglar-trap that he
concocted after the scare. If another Cheffins paid him a visit, he'd
put his foot in it with a vengeance."

"It would be six of one and very nearly half a dozen of the other," said
I with hardihood. "Set a Nettleton to catch a Cheffins, as you might
say, Uvo!"

But he only smiled, as though he would not have hesitated to say it in
fun. "Of course you're only joking, Gilly, but I could quite understand
it if you weren't. There's no vice in old Nettleton, let alone crime;
but there's a chuckle-headed irresponsibility that might almost let him
in for either before he knew it. He never does seem to know what he's
doing, and I'm sure he never worries about anything he's once done. If
he did, he'd have gone further afield from the scene of his downfall, or
else taken rooms in town instead of a red elephant of a house that he
evidently can't afford. As a tenant, I quite agree that he is hopeless."

"If only he hadn't come here!" I grumbled. "What on earth can have
brought him to Witching Hill, of all places?"

Uvo's eyes were dancing in the light of the reading gas-lamp, with the
smelly tube, which had been connected up with his bedroom bracket.

"Of course," he whispered, "you wouldn't admit for a moment that it
might be the call of the soil, and all there's in it, Gilly?"

"No, I wouldn't; but I'll tell you one thing," I exclaimed, as it struck
me for the first time: "the man you describe is not the man to trust
with all those morbid superstitions of yours! I know he enters into
them, because you told me he did, and I know how much you wanted to find
some one who would. But so much the worse for you both, if he's the kind
you say he is. An idle man, too, and apparently alone in the world! I
don't envy you if Nettleton really does come under the influence of your
old man of the soil, and plays down to him!"

"My dear Gilly, this is a great concession," whispered Uvo, on his elbow
with surprise.

"I don't mean it for one," said I sturdily. "I only mean the influence
of your own conception of your old man and his powers. I disbelieve in
him and them as much as ever, but I don't disbelieve in your ability to
make both exist in some weaker mind than your own. And where they do
catch on, remember, those wild ideas of yours may always get the upper
hand. It isn't everybody who can think the things you do, Uvo, and never
look like doing