and frightened, and felt my father, stumbling through the dark, trip and almost fall cross me, crying, "Tommy! Tommy!" He took me back into the hut, and hugged me convulsively when he found me unhurt. The woman lay writhing on the ground, with a dreadful dark stain upon her breast. My father's hand was gashed across; and on the floor lay a blood-stained knife. And now my father from pretence seemed to become a madman in reality. He laughed and shouted and stamped the floor where the wretched victim lay feebly cursing and spitting blood. His evil joy was terrible, and frightened me even more than the blood-drenched figure at his feet. And then he began heaping the fire into a tremendous blaze, and scattering flaming brands against the walls, till at last the crazy structure began to smoulder, and then a sudden sharp flame or two shot up. And all the while he shouted and laughed, cheering on the growing conflagration, till the place was full of choking smoke, and our eyes ran streaming, and the heat scorched our cheeks. And at last he seized me and swung me to his shoulders, and raced away with me through the darkness, now beginning to be touched with grey between the trees; and soon behind us the glare of the burning hut was like a cruel red eye blinking at us out of the blackness. As we pushed free of the woodland into the grey and open morning my father set me down, and looking back heaved a great sigh and wiped his brow. Then he seized me by the hand and danced me round repeating excitedly, "We're free, Tommy, we're free!" "Was it Shadow-of-Fear?" I asked. My father's face darkened. "Shadow-of-Fear never dies," he answered. "But we shall escape him now." And he smiled again. "But that," I said, "who is that?" "Ah, that," he laughed, "was the old witch, Bite-in-the-Dark." CHAPTER III THE DOLPHIN INN I suppose it's natural enough that the events of that night should stand out in my memory with vivid distinctness, while the six or seven years that followed have only left a general impression of their progress. I can't possibly say where our wanderings led us, for my father still seemed ill at ease if he lingered too long at one place. But now they became less harassing. We didn't steal away at the dead of night, and hide for days in the woods. We journeyed in comfort with horses or by coach, and sheltered by the welcome of great inn fires. I remember that this was a time of intensive education for me; not so much in book-learning--though my father taught me my letters, and was even anxious that I should master Latin--but rather in the arts of hiding, tracking, and every kind of physical prowess. It seems to me now that I had the training of a Redskin rather than of an English boy; but I know I entered into it with relish, and pleased my father by my precocious skill in climbing, in fighting with the knife, and especially in swimming and diving.