"That is to be seen!" Edgington answered quickly. "There is a pool below. Let us make trial of him there, Master Gridley. If the lad sinks, well and good. If he will not sink, well and good also. We shall know what to do with him." Simon nodded sternly. "Good," he said; "let it be so." But this the boy had still the sense to understand. A vision of the dark bog pool sullenly lipping the rocks which fringed its shores flashed before his childish eyes. In a second the full horror of the fate which threatened him burst upon him, and those eyes grew large with terror. The color left his face. He tried to rise, he tried to frame the word Gridley, he tried to ask for mercy. He could not. Fear had deprived him of the power of speech, and he could only look. But his look was one to melt the heart of any save a fanatic. Gridley the butler was no fanatic, and though he was a bad man he was not inhuman. Something in the boy's piteous look went straight to his heart. He alone of those present, though he never doubted the existence of witchcraft, doubted the boy's guilt, for he alone had known him all his life, and could see nothing unfamiliar in him. He remembered him a baby, prattling and crawling, and playing like any other baby; and despite himself--for there was nothing noble or brave in the man--he stepped forward and interposed between Simon and his victim. "I have known the child all his life," he said hoarsely. "He has been as other children, Simon." His brother looked at him coldly. "Is he as other children to-day?" he said, and he pointed to the cross on the table. The butler, thus challenged, made as if he would take up the talisman. But at the last moment, when his hand was near it, his heart failed him. He doubted, he was a coward, and he drew back. "He was always as other children," he muttered again, hopelessly, helplessly. "I have known him from his birth." "Very well," Simon answered, with pitiless logic. "We shall see presently if he is as other children now. The water will show." He stepped towards the boy as he spoke, but Jack saw him coming, and reading his fate in the grim, unrelenting looks which everywhere met his eyes, screamed loudly. The child was fast bound, and could not fly, but bound as he was he managed to fling himself on the floor, and lay there screaming. Simon plucked him up roughly, and looked round for something to muffle his cries. "The cloak!" he said hurriedly--the noise discomposed him. "The cloak!" Luke went to fetch it from the dresser on which it had been laid, but before he could bring it, the boy on a sudden stopped screaming, and stiffened himself in Simon's arms. "I will tell," he cried wildly. "Let me go! Let me go, and I will tell." The man was astonished, as were they all. But he set the boy back in the chair, and took his hands off him, and stood waiting, with a stern light in his eyes, to hear this devil's tale.