So it came about that, without daring to make himself heard, my father was a witness of the final scene in the oven chamber behind the monks' bakehouse. He had a bar of iron against his shoulder and a file knife in his right hand, but for all that he was helpless to render any assistance till he should have cut through the thick diagonal of metal, and so made a way for himself into the dark cupboard. All at once, my father, lying prone on his breast and sawing at the obstruction as best he could, with his arms in a most uncomfortable position for working--being higher than his head--became aware of an additional light in the room which he could before see only dimly illuminated by Elsie's candle. A man had opened the outer fastenings. His dark shadow crossed the crack of light which was the edge of the cupboard door ajar. There was also a flash of a brighter light for a moment in my father's eyes, which was the swinging of the lantern the man carried. He laid his hand on the young girl's shoulder, and with a cry which went to Joseph Yarrow's heart, Elsie came back from the Orinoco, to find Mad Jeremy looking down upon her. "Sleepin'?" he chuckled, "and over her book, the bonnie bairn! She's a teacher, a lassie dominie--they tell me. But Jeremy will learn her something this nicht that is better than a' the wisdom written in the buiks. Be never feared, lass. "Ye are the heiress. And I am the heir." "But come ye wi' me, lassie, and this nicht we will drink o' the white wine and the red, till the bottom faa's oot o' the stoup. I promised it to you that, when I gat the melodeon, I wad play ye the mony grand tunes--and ye wad dance--dance, Elsie, dance, my bonnie, like a star through the meadow-mist or a dewdrap on a bit rose-leaf when the west winds swing the tree!" All this time Elsie, gazing amazed at the man, rested silent in an awful consternation. She had never seen Mad Jeremy like this. His curly hair now hung straight and black. Perspiration stood in beads on his brow. He breathed quick and heavy, with a curious rattle in the throat. Slowly Elsie rose to her feet. She stood between my father and his view of the apartment, as it were, cutting it off. He bit his hand to keep him from doing or saying anything, knowing himself to be impotent, and that the best he could do was just to wait. Otherwise, Mad Jeremy would simply have come round and despatched him first. For never (says my father) did murder so plainly look out of a man's eyes as that night in the oven chamber. Mad Jeremy took Elsie by the wrist. "Come, lassie," he cried, with a lightsome skip of the foot--for, indeed, the man could not keep still a moment--"come awa'! The gray goose is gone, and the fox--the fox, the auld bauld cunnin' fox--is off to his den-O--den-O--den-O!"