For a moment the boy lay huddled up and panting, with his lips apart, and the sweat on his flushed brow. He had said--with the man's hands, on him and the black water before his eyes--that he would tell. But as he crouched there, getting his breath, and looking from one to another like a frightened animal, thoughts of his brother whom he must betray, thoughts of devotion and love, all childish but all living, surged through his brain. The men and the woman waited, some sternly curious, and some in fear; but the boy remained dumb. He had conquered his terror. He was learning that what men suffer for others is no suffering. Simon lost patience at last. "Speak!" he cried, "or to the water!" The boy eyed him trembling, but remained silent. "Give him a little more time," said one of the other men. "Ay, hurry him not," said Luke. "He has had time enough," Simon retorted. "He is but playing with us." Yet he left him a little longer, while all stood round and looked, greedy to hear with their own ears one of those strange confessions of witchcraft, which, whether they had their origin in delusion or in some interested motive, were not uncommon in the England of that day. But the child, though his breath came quick and fast, and his heart throbbed like the heart of a little bird, and he feared unspeakably, remained obstinately silent. "Enough!" Simon cried at last, his patience utterly exhausted; "he is dumb. We shall get nothing from him here. Let us see what the water will do for him. Luke, the cloak!" Jack controlled his fears until the man's hands were actually upon him. Then instinct prevailed, and in despair he gave way to shriek upon shriek, so that the house rang with the pitiful outcry. "The cloak!" Simon cried impatiently, looking this way and that for it, while the butler turned pale at the sounds. "That is better; now open the door." One of the Edgingtons went towards it, but when he was close to it, stopped on a sudden and held up his hand. The gesture was one of warning, but it came too late; for before those behind could profit by it, or do more than surmise what it meant, the door shook under a heavy knock, and a hand outside lifted the latch. The neighing of horses and the sound of hoofs trampling the stones of the fold gave the party some idea what they had to expect; but late also, for ere Simon could lay down the child, or Edgington move from his position, the door was thrown wide open. Half a dozen figures appeared on the threshold, and one detatching itself from the crowd strode in with an air of sturdy authority.