"Hush, hush, Jeremy!" cried Aphra. "Think what you are saying, brother. But bethink yourself, brother dear, you must make an end now. The girl has heard too much, and that from your own lips." Mad Jeremy ran his fingers through his long, glossy ringlets with something like a smirk. "Na, na," he said, "I can better that! She shall bide in the cove behind the muckle oven, where three times a week Jeremy bakes the bread. She will be fine and warm there. Nothing to do but set her soles against the waa', and in a trice she will be as comfortable as a ha'penny breakfast roll. No like yin I could name--ha, ha!--freezin' in the----" But this time Aphra fairly sprang upon him, putting her hand over his mouth to stop his speech. "Oh, that I should be troubled with fools that know not their own folly," she cried--"I, that have given more than my life, almost my soul, for these poor things, my sisters and my brother, yet who will not be guided by me!" Mad Jeremy laughed cunningly, or rather, perhaps, emitted a cackling sound. "Be guided by you, Aphra?" he said. "No, and I don't think! Jeremy may be mad, but he kens a trick worth two of that. He will keep this little ladybird safe--oh, very safe, till the wedding dress is ready! Heiress if you like, sister. But then Jeremy will be the heir. And a bonnie, bonnie bride he will hae into the bargain. Come your ways, hinny--come your ways!" He spoke to me with a curious, caressing voice, bowing low like a dancing master, with his broad bonnet in his hand, and making all sorts of ludicrous gestures to prove that I would be safe with him. I did not know what to do. From the woman I had nothing to expect but a knife at my throat, and yet to accompany Mad Jeremy! That I could not do. Suddenly I screamed aloud at the top of my voice, hoping that some one would hear me and come to my assistance. But Mad Jeremy only put his arm about me and covered my mouth with one great hairy paw. "Gently then, lass--nane o' that, noo! It wanna do," he said, not angrily at all, but rather like one soothing an infant; "ye see there's nae workers in the fields thae winter days. And if there were hail armies, they wad kep wide o' the Deep Moat Wood, for they hae seen Jeremy gang in there a gye wheen times--ech, aye!" And picking me up in his arms as easily as a babe, Mad Jeremy carried me into an ivy-covered ruin, and after that all was a labyrinth of passages and tunnels till I found myself in the place where I wrote these notes. CHAPTER XXIII WITHIN THE MONKS' OVEN The chamber into which Jeremy led me was small, but it had evidently been used for a sleeping-room before. A couch was placed in the corner. There were chairs and even a table. But I saw at the first glance that the window, placed high in the vaulted roof, was unglazed, but barred.