, shooting out toward you
as if to dry your marrow--hot, ever hotter--ha, who comes there, who
wants to interfere?

Startled, he suddenly stood still, his features convulsed as if in
pain.

A strong hand pressed the latch of the front door. The door was not
locked; it opened, and out of the soft twilight of the mild summer
night the constable and the chairman stepped into the seething darkness
of the widow's cottage.

"Are you already asleep?" said the chairman, somewhat embarrassed. "Eh,
Katie, excuse us! Do you hear?"

But the constable had already seized hold of him on whose account they
came, and had held him motionless with a firm fist accustomed to
overcoming resistance.

Will Stoker did not offer to struggle; he cowed there, his head
drooping between his shoulders. All he did was to utter a peevish cry,
as children do when rudely awakened from sleep.

The old woman, who had not been aroused by the loud call of the
chairman, woke up now immediately and sat up in bed.

"William, where are you? What is the matter, William?"

"He is here--don't get excited," said the chairman, groping his way
to the hearth and stirring the embers till they blazed up and lighted
the room. "Katie, be sensible, make no disturbance! William here we are
going to take away with us for a while--he is--he must--he--"

"Take away William--where, I should like to know?" The woman stopped
short. "William?--no indeed, he stays here," she said in a decided
tone, and reached for her skirts on the stool by the bedside.

"Remain where you are, stay in bed! Pst!--"

The chairman was about to cover the woman's mouth with his hand; but
she had seen the gleam of brass buttons on the uniform, and in
senseless fear of the constable had uttered a piercing shriek. With
both feet she leaped out of bed and now stood trembling before the two
men.

What did they want here? And in the dead of night! In a stupor of
horror her eyes wandered from one to the other. Then she saw the iron
grip in which the constable held her William. What--what had her
William done? Nothing! They must let him go, let him go at once!

Screaming reproaches she made up to the constable; but he rudely
brushed her to one side.

"Hold your tongue, woman," he said curtly, "do not get yourself into
trouble. Forward, march!"

With a prod in the back he urged his prisoner on. But the old lady
seized the skirts of his coat and held him fast with unlooked-for
strength.

"Wi