Bending, he struck a match on the smooth of his corduroy trousers, and in a moment the flame mounted with a roar. Jeremy stood in the doorway chuckling, long enough to make sure that it had taken. "Ay, ay, a bonnie funeral pyre! That they will hae, baith the twa!" he said. "The last o' the Stennises! A bonnie lass she was--but Jeremy couldna be fashed wi' women folk--na, na, Aphra and her wad never agree." The draught drew upward through the silent house. It increased to a wind, sucking toward the flames. He could hear the crackling. With a return of his mad humour he began to dance. He waved his melodeon, making the bells leap and jangle. And in the pale gleam of the still half-smothered flames he flickered down the stairs in the direction of the hall of Deep Moat Grange. Mad Jeremy had made an end of the House of Stennis. CHAPTER XXXI THE HERO PLAYS SECOND FIDDLE Now, while Elsie was dancing the hours away in desperate danger of her life and to the peril of her reason, Mr. Ablethorpe and I had not been idle. That is, so far as was within our power to act or our knowledge to foresee. He had allowed me to judge of the state of the rings which had been passed through the furnace. I was still uncertain of their portent till he produced an oval plaque with the mark V.R. upon it. It was of brass, and had doubtless formed part of the single leathern sack which Harry Foster kept open so as to take on to Bewick anything which might be committed to his care _en route_. There could be no doubt. We had found the murderer of Harry Foster--that is, we had only to find who made the bread at Deep Moat Grange in order to be sure of him. It was, indeed, a known thing that, save on a rare occasion, the Moat Grange people made their own bread--but whether in the shape of griddle-cakes, soda scones, or properly baked oven loaves, no one knew. But Mr. Ablethorpe and I were sure there would be no more difficulty. More than that we meant to find out--the clew was the first one which had really promised well, and we meant to follow it. That very night we got ready to go, even though Mr. Ablethorpe ought now to have been at home, preparing for his Sunday services, instead of doing detective business across country on the strength of a few calcined rings and a brass plate. * * * * * It was about this time that my father, with torn and bleeding hands, was working desperately at the bar of iron. His knife was worn to a stump, but the open door of Elsie's cell tempted him with a terrible sense of the unknown which was passing outside. Besides, he could not tell at what moment Jeremy might return, and, shutting the door, shut off at the same time his hopes of escape and of helping Elsie, whom he saw already in the grasp of the midnight assassin.