"God!" he howled, "it's been follerin' me." He grovelled.

Casting his eyes upward made circles swirl in his blood.

"I'm shackled I guess," he moaned. As he felt the heel of the mountain
about crush his head, he sprang again to his feet. He grasped a handful
of small stones and hurled them.

"Damn you," he shrieked loudly. The pebbles rang against the face of the
mountain.

The little man then made an attack. He climbed with hands and feet
wildly. Brambles forced him back and stones slid from beneath his feet.
The peak swayed and tottered, and was ever about to smite with a granite
arm. The summit was a blaze of red wrath.

But the little man at last reached the top. Immediately he swaggered
with valour to the edge of the cliff. His hands were scornfully in his
pockets.

He gazed at the western horizon, edged sharply against a yellow sky.
"Ho!" he said. "There's Boyd's house and the Lumberland Pike."

The mountain under his feet was motionless.

MISCELLANEOUS

THE SQUIRE'S MADNESS.

Linton was in his study remote from the interference of domestic sounds.
He was writing verses. He was not a poet in the strict sense of the
word, because he had eight hundred a year and a manor-house in Sussex.
But he was devoted, at any rate, and no happiness was for him equal to
the happiness of an imprisonment in this lonely study. His place had
been a semi-fortified house in the good days when every gentleman was
either abroad with a bared sword hunting his neighbours or behind
oak-and-iron doors and three-feet walls while his neighbours hunted him.
But in the life of Linton it may be said that the only part of the house
which remained true to the idea of fortification was the study, which
was free only to Linton's wife and certain terriers. The necessary
appearance from time to time of a servant always grated upon Linton as
much as if from time to time somebody had in the most well-bred way
flung a brick through the little panes of his window.

This window looked forth upon a wide valley of hop-fields and
sheep-pastures, dipping and rising this way and that way, but always a
valley until it reached a high far away ridge upon which stood the
upright figure of a windmill, usually making rapid gestures as if it
were an excited sentry warning the old grey house of coming danger. A
little to the right, on a knoll, red chimneys and parts of red-tiled
roofs appeared among trees, and the venerable square tower of th